JoTHICS 

j' ■ . FOR |V 

Young "People 



9 

Everett 




Ginn u Com pan' 




Class JMiMi 

Book • El 7 



ETHICS 



FOR 



YOUNG PEOPLE. 



BY 

C. C. EVERETT 

Bussey Professor of Theology in Harvard University; Author of "The 
Science of Thought," "Poetry, Comedy and Duty," etc. 



GINN & COMPANY 

BOSTON ■ NEW YORK • CHICAGO • LONDON 



Copyright, 1891, 
By C. C. Everett. 
66.2 



ftp Transfer^ 
APR 22 1918 



<Efje gtfjenaeum 3&rt&& 



GINN & COMPANY • PRO- 
PRIETORS • BOSTON • U.S.A. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



Morality in General . 
Duties Towards One's Self 
Duties Towards Others . 
Helps and Hindrances 



Chapters I.-X. 

XI.-XXIII. 
XXIV.-XXXVIII. 
XXXIX-XLV. 



Chapter Page 

I. The Relation of Ethics to Other Studies , i 

II. The Relation of Ethics to Other Studies, — 

Continued ....... 4 

III. The Relation of the Different Sciences to 

Reality . . . . . . . 7 

IV. Ethics as a Way of Life . . . .11 
V. The Ethics of Custom . . . 13 

VI. The Imperfection of the Ethics of Custom . 16 

VII. Principles in Morality 19 

VIII. The Breaking Up of the Ethics of Custom . 23 

IX. The Epicureans 26 

X. The Stoics . . . . . . -30 



XI. Fortitude . . . . . . -33 

XII. Courage 37 

XIII. Courage, — Continued . .... 40 

XIV. Heroism ........ 43 

XV. Different Kinds of Heroes .... 46 



XVI. Contentment . . . . . -53 

XVII. Ambition . 58 

XVIII. Education as a Duty . . . . .61 

XIX. Self-Education as a Duty . . . . 64 



iv TABLE OF CONTENTS. 

Chapter Page 

XX. Self-Respect. . . . * . . .67 

XXI. Self-Respect continued (including Cleanliness 

and Purity) . . . . . .71 

XXII. Self-Control 74 

XXIII. Self-Reliance 78 

XXIV. Relations to Others . . . .84 
XXV. Selfishness . 88 

XXVI. Obedience 92 

XXVII. Love and Sympathy 96 

XXVIII. Usefulness . 99 

XXIX. Truth and Honesty 103 

XXX. Good Temper 106 

XXXI. Courtesy . . . . . . 110 

XXXII. The Playground 114 

XXXIII. Fun 119 

XXXIV. Friendship 125 

XXXV. The Home . . . . . . .130 

XXXVI. The School . . . . . . .137 

XXXVII. Patriotism 143 

XXXVIII. Kindness to Animals . . . ; -149 

XXXIX. Companions 152 

XL. Reading 156 

XLI. The Imagination 160 

XLII. Industry 165 

XLIII. Habit . .169 

XLIV. Temptations 173 

XLV. The Conscience 178 

XLVI. Conclusion 184 



ETHICS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE RELATION OF ETHICS TO OTHER STUDIES. 

Ethics is the science of morality. By science is here 
meant the systematic treatment of any object of study. 

Ethics is called a science, because it presents the 
principles of morality in a systematic form, and seeks to 
find the basis upon which they rest. 

A comparison with other departments of study^may 
make more clear the nature of the subjects of which 
Ethics treats. 

There are three kinds of science. 

There are in the first place the sciences that treat of 
facts, of their relations to one another, and of the laws 
that govern them. It is to these that the name sci- 
ence is more commonly given. 

These sciences have to do with facts past and future 
as well as present. 

Geology pictures to us the state of the earth long 
ages ago, and astronomy, that of the heavens. The 
astronomer can also foretell the position of the planets 
at any moment in the future, if he cares to make the 
calculation ; and the geologist can foretell the future of 
the world, though with less exactness as to time. 



2 



Ethics for Young People, 



To these sciences one thing is as important as another 
if it illustrates the working of a general law. The insect, 
the dust that fills the air, in a word, anything may be 
an object of study. ^ 

You would hardly believe, for instance, how much the 
frog has contributed to the knowledge of the world. 

The web of the frog's foot is so thin and transparent 
that under the microscope the blood can be seen mov- 
ing. Looked at in this way the blood is perceived to 
be not a mere fluid. You can see what look like circular 
discs borne along something like the cakes of ice that 
are carried by a stream in a freshet. In this way the 
student of anatomy can learn in a moment more about 
the circulation of the blood than can be taught in any 
other way in a much longer time. Moreover, what he 
sees he knows as he does not know what is merely 
told him, just as, though^ you may have learned in 
books about the hippopotamus, for instance, the sight 
of one first gives you real knowledge about it. 

Further, Professor Frog is not merely a teacher, he 
is a discoverer. The changes seen in the blood when 
the web of the foot is inflamed, taught more in regard 
to the nature of inflammation than had ever been known 
before. 

Through the frog, galvanism was discovered. Gal- 
vani, an Italian, noticed that the leg of a dead frog that 
was being prepared for the table twitched violently 

under certain circumstances. This observation led to 
examination and experiment, and, as I just said, galvan- 
ism was discovered. 



The Relation of Ethics to Other Studies. 



3 



In addition to all this, so much has been learned from 
the frog in relation to the nervous system, that it would 
take almost a book by itself to describe it. 

Let any boy think of all this when he is tempted to 
throw a stone at a frog, and ask himself whether he 
is likely ever to do so much good as frogs have done. 

You probably know how Franklin discovered that 
the lightning is a form of electricity by flying a kite 
in a thunderstorm. I remind you of these things to 
show that there is nothing so trivial that it may not 
have an interest for science. 

It would be a good plan for all boys and girls to 
study some science, so that they could understand and 
take an interest in flowers or rocks, or some other natural 
objects. Then, wherever they went, they would find 
something to occupy their minds. They would learn 
to keep their eyes open, so that they would see in the 
world a thousand things that they would never have 
dreamed of otherwise. 

I repeat that what is commonly called " science " 
treats of facts, and that all sorts of facts are important 
to it 



4 



Ethics for Young People. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE RELATION OF ETHICS TO OTHER STUDIES. 
Continued. 

THERE are, in the second place, other sciences that 
treat of the means by which certain desirable ends may 
be reached. 

Health is one of the most desirable things in the 
world, and thus there is a science called Hygiene which 
treats of the methods by which health may be pre- 
served. 

The health of the state is perhaps more important 
than that of the citizen ; so there is the science of Polit- 
ical Economy which shows the conditions on which the 
prosperity of the state depends. 

Indeed, there is nothing that we try to do which has 
not or might not have its science. There is a science 
of music, and a science of painting. There is also a 
science even of base-ball. The kind of curve that the 
pitcher must give the ball so that it will change its course 
just in time to baffle the stroke of the batter would be a 
matter of very interesting scientific research. 

Such a study is called an art when the application of 
principles is more dwelt upon than the principles them- 
selves. Thus we have both the science and the art of 
speaking, of painting, and of other matters which men 
try to accomplish. 

If a man would really accomplish anything he must 



The Relation of Ethics to Other Studies. 



5 



generally add to the science or the art what can best be 
called a " knack/' By this I mean the skill that comes 
mostly by practice, added to a certain mental fitness or 
common-sense. A student of medicine may know 
all about diseases and cures, who could hardly tell the 
measles from the small-pox when he first saw it. The 
boy is taught how to pitch a ball ; but at first trying 
it goes all awry. All at once it goes just as it should, 
while he seems to himself to be doing just what he did 
before. 

The sciences that teach us the conditions upon which 
depend the ends that we wish to bring about, we may 
take together and call the science of means. 

A third kind of science shows the ends which are in 
themselves desirable. This is the science that is called 
Ethics. 

A man, for instance, wishes to succeed in business. 
His studies and his practical training have fitted him 
to do this. He seeks out all the methods by which he 
may reach success. He shrinks from no labor of mind, 
or, if need be, of body, for this end. In all this he is 
right. We admire skill, industry and pluck. There is, 
however, one kind of means that he may not use. He 
may not stoop to fraud of any kind. He may desire 
and seek wealth ; he must desire and seek honor and 
honesty. These are among the ends that morality in- 
sists upon, and that may not be sacrificed to anything 
else. 

Thus, while the first class of sciences that I named 
has to do with all facts, and the second only with 



6 



Ethics for Young People, 



those that help or hinder the reaching of certain ends, 
Ethics has to do with the ends themselves. 

Ethics is thus the science of living; not of living 
healthily and long, — the science of Hygiene has to do 
with that, — but of living well ; that is, in such a way as 
to make life really worth living. 



Relation of Different Sciences to Reality. *J 



CHAPTER III. 

THE RELATION OF THE DIFFERENT SCIENCES TO 
REALITY. 

The science of facts has changed greatly men } s thought 
of the world. Men used to think that the earth stands 
still and that the sun revolves about it. They knew 
nothing of steam as a means of power, and were igno- 
rant of many things which are so familiar to us, that a 
schoolboy knows more about them to-day than the 
wisest men who lived long ago. 

This kind of science has not changed the worlds it has 
simply found out about the world. The facts and laws 
of which it treats were the same then as now, whether 
men knew them or not. 

Men were, for example, whirling around the sun 
with the earth, when they thought that the sun and the 
stars were whirling about them. Electricity was as 
active then as now, though it had not been set to work. 
The laws of the universe have not changed ; only men's 
notions about them have changed. 

There are doubtless a great many laws of the world 
which we do not yet know ; and a great many elements 
and forces which we have not yet discovered ; so that 
the people of future ages will know as much more than 
we do as we know more than our forefathers. 

By science, then, we are slowly learning to see the 
world as it is. The change is not in it but in us. 



8 



Ethics for Young People. 



The science of means and the arts that spring from 
it have really changed the world. This power to change 
the world constitutes a great difference between the sci- 
ence of means and that of facts. Think of all the cities 
and railways that have been built, of all the forests that 
have been cut down, of all the instruments that have 
been invented, because men have been bringing about 
the ends that seemed desirable by what seemed to them 
the best means. 

Men have not always used the best means ; they 
have merely used the best that they knew. 

The best ways were always the best ways, even before 
men found them out, or before they were able to use 
them. The savage used to kindle his fires by rubbing 
two dry sticks together till they became so hot that 
they burst into a blaze. This was the best way for him 
because it was the best way that he knew. It was, 
however, not really the best way, for a friction match 
would have been better, if he had had knowledge and 
wit to invent it. The laws of Hygiene have been al- 
ways the same, though cities have invited disease by 
being undrained and filthy. The principles of Political 
Economy, though there have been foolish and harmful 
laws and social customs, are always the same. 

The best ways are thus always the same, just as the 
laws and forces of the world are the same. The science 
of means is simply finding out these best ways ; just as 
the science of facts is finding out the truth about the 
world. 

The science of ends has also changed the world very 



Relation of Different Sciences to Reality. 9 

much. In some former times men were much more 
cruel than they are now, and cared less for others, ex- 
cept when these others were their friends. Those who 
were strong often robbed or murdered the weak or held 
them in slavery. They cared very little how others 
lived. Now there is more helpfulness, as well as less 
cruelty, in the world. Many are interested that the sick 
should have better homes. There is still a great deal 
of selfishness and cruelty in the world, but this care for 
others has removed many of the evils of life. We are 
as comfortable and happy as we are to-day, because 
among those who have lived before us there were many 
who did not seek merely their own good. 

The laws of right doing, also, are always the same, 
whether men know and obey them or not. 

One difference between the science of ends and other 
kinds of science is, that men have not only to learn 
what is right, but have also to be willing to do it. If 
men really want to accomplish anything, and really 
know the best w r ay of doing it, they will hardly fail to 
take this way. On the contrary, they may know what 
is right and yet be unwilling to do it. 

If one does not know what is right, he cannot be ex- 
pected to do it, or blamed if he does not do it. Though 
the life of love and of helpfulness, of care for the stran- 
ger and for the weak, is and always has been the true 
life, it was not the fault of the savage, living in barbar- 
ism, that he did not follow it, if he knew nothing better 
than his own cruel way of living. 

The science of morality, like the science of facts, seeks 



10 



Ethics for Young People. 



to learn what is. It does not invent the laws of right, 
it finds them. The laws of right do not grow. They 
have always existed, as truly as the laws which govern 
the motion of the planets. 

Future ages will probably look down upon our bar- 
barism, as we do upon that of the savage. It will not 
be because the laws of right have become different. It 
will be simply because men will have learned more of 
what is right, and will have become more willing to 
practice what they know. 



Ethics as a Way of Life. 



II 



CHAPTER IV. 

ETHICS AS A WAY OF LIFE. 

The word Ethics is derived from a Greek word 1 that 
means custom or habit. The word Morality is derived 
from a Latin word 2 having a like meaning. Thus both 
words meant at first what is habitual. Habit and cus- 
tom, here, probably refer, not to the custom of a people, 
but, that of men and women taken separately. 

Everybody has a way of life which has become to a 
certain extent habitual with him. 

In regard to a person that you know very well, you 
form some idea of his way of life, as really as you do of 
his personal appearance. You know pretty well what 
to expect of him. You know that you can trust one 
person and that you cannot trust another ; that one boy 
will probably be rude, and another courteous ; that one 
will probably have his lesson, and that another will not ; 
that one will join in some piece of unkind mischief, and 
that another will not. 

You sometimes hear a story which you do not 
believe about some one whom you know very well. 
You say, " It is not like him, he would never do so in 
the world." Sometimes we judge the representations in 
novels in this way. We say of the act of some charac- 



1 T H0oc- 



2 Mos, in the plural Mores. 



12 



Ethics for Young People. 



ter, " It is not natural." We have learned to know the 
character so well that we feel that the author has made 
a mistake. 

This "way of life" shows itself in the occupations 
and amusements which different persons prefer. Some 
young people would rather play than read ; others 
would rather read than play. Some enter heartily into 
their work or their play. Some are lazy and indifferent 
in both. Some join heartily in one, but not in the other. 

The difference in people's ways reaches to matters 
much more minute than those that I have named. You 
cannot describe a man's * way ' any more than you can 
his face, but you know it all the same ; and his looks 
and his ways together make up your general notion of 
him. 

It is this difference in people's ways that is largely 
the reason why you like to be with one person rather 
than with another. Friends are apt to be those whose 
ways are similar or at least harmonious. 

People sometimes change their ways so that they be- 
come better or more agreeable. Thus a person is 
sometimes said to " mend his ways." 

It is a poor excuse for one's negligence or selfishness 
to say, " Oh, it is his way." This makes the matter 
worse rather than better. 

Though the word Ethics referred originally simply to 
the habits and ways of different people, it soon came to 
mean a study of the best way of living ; that is, of the 
ends and methods of life that are most to be desired. 



The Ethics of Custom. 



1.3 



CHAPTER V. 

THE ETHICS OF CUSTOM. 

At all times the manner of life of the individual has 
been greatly influenced by the customs of the society 
in which he lived. Our lives to-day are shaped to a 
great extent by the lives of those about us. 

In the earlier times, this law of custom was the only 
standard of morality . What was customary was recog- 
nized as right, and was often believed to rest on divine 
authority. A large part of life was thus determined by 
custom. In what was not thus determined a man could 
do what he pleased. 

Many things that are really very wrong were thus 
justified by custom, and were sometimes even com- 
manded by it. Such have been, sometimes, the putting 
the aged to death, which was required by custom among 
the Fiji Islanders ; and the murder or the neglect of 
children, which was permitted. A Roman father could 
bring up his child or not, as it pleased him. He had 
the power of life or death over his family. Slavery has 
been thus justified, and has often been very cruel. You 
^ know how perilous it is, even to-day, for a stranger to 
find himself in the midst of barbarians, as in the heart 
of Africa. The barbarians feel it neither a wrong to slay 
strangers nor a duty to protect them. They do in this 
matter just what they happen to feel like doing. 



14 



Ethics for Young People. 



The morality of custom is thus a very imperfect kind 
of morality y both in what it commands and in what it 
allows. 

The morality of custom has, however, been of great 
service to the world. The customs of civilized men 
have, in some respects, improved from age to age, and 
these better customs have tended to make men better, 
and thus to introduce still better customs. 

' Suppose we all had to start for ourselves, without 
finding any principles of action recognized in the world, 
we should be much worse than we actually are. If we 
each had to learn for himself, that it is wrong to kill and 
to steal, for instance, many more would fail to learn the 
lesson than do now. 

Many persons at the present day recognize no moral 
standard except that of the custom in the community 
in which they live. They are in this like those who 
lived in more barbarous times ; only the custom which 
they obey is often, though not always, very much better 
than that of the barbarians. 

The social customs of the present day represent the 
result of the lives of all who have lived before us. Their 
way of living makes the customs of the community in 
which we live. 

These customs are different among different sets of 
persons, even in the same town. It is the average mo- 
rality that determines the lives of most. 

This average of custom in morals is like the mode, or 
fashion, in dress. A lady asks, for instance, "What 
are they wearing this season? " 



The Ethics of Custom. 



15 



The lowest and worst form of the morality of custom 
takes shape in the proverb which tells us that " When 
we are in Rome we must do as the Romans do." — This 
proverb commonly means that a man need never try to 
be better than those about him. 

If men had always acted according to this rule, the 
world would never have improved; for the world im- 
proves by the help of some, in every age, who are bet- 
ter than those about them, and thus raise the general 
level of life. If men had always acted in the spirit of 
this proverb, there would have been no heroes, for the 
hero is one who is heroic : that is, who is braver and 
nobler than other men. 

You would not think much of a boy or girl who is 
always ready to do what the rest do, whether it is good 
or bad, wise or foolish. Yet there are a good many 
people, old and young, who act upon this principle. 

On the other hand, the morality of custom keeps 
many men from sinking to lives much lower than they 
actually live. If it does nothing to make the world bet- 
ter, it often prevents it from growing worse. It helps 
to keep society from losing the ground that it has 
dready gained. 

It is a good rule of life that one should never fall below 
the average morality of the society in which one lives. 

This is a pretty low standard, but we shall have 
higher ones as we go on. If all would act according to 
this rule, however, we should escape drunkenness, vice, 
dishonesty, impurity, and many other bad things which 
are the sediment and mud of social life. 



i6 



Ethics for Young People. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE IMPERFECTION OF THE ETHICS OF CUSTOM. 

WHILE the morality that rests on custom is better 
than nothing, it is yet very imperfect. 

It represents, as we have seen, only the average Moral- 
ity of any time or place. Thus the influence of the 
best men is not felt in it except indirectly; that is, so 
far as they may in time affect the general custom. The 
man whose morality rests on that which prevails about 
him does not ask what the best men do, but what 
average men do ; or, as it is often expressed, what " they 
do." 

The morality that rests upon custom is uncertain. 
Customs vary in different communities, and, as we have 
seen, in different circles of the same community. 
While certain gross faults and crimes are forbidden by 
the average morality, the judgment in regard to other 
matters varies so much that one who is looking to cus- 
tom to know what he should do, might easily become 
confused. 

Further, he might live so wholly in some one circle 
that he should take its judgment for that of the commu- 
nity. Before the French Revolution, for instance, the 
nobles thought that their standard of right and wrong 
was that of the nation. They oppressed the people in 
many cruel ways ; but when the Revolution broke out 



Imperfections of Ethics of Custom. 17 



they had no support against the popular fury. Politi- 
cians have sometimes a low standard of political action 
which they think is the popular one, when perhaps it is 
one for which the best people have a contempt. In 
certain trades or professions there may be ways of busi- 
ness which contradict the general principles of honesty 
even as these are recognized by the world at large. In 
a school or college there may be a standard of public 
sentiment very different from that of the outside world ; 
or in a group of scholars there may be ways of acting 
and of feeling which contradict the best sentiment of 
the school at large. One's moral sense may thus be- 
come confused and blinded. 

A morality based upon custom is variable. As one 
passes from one circle to another, or from one commu- 
nity to another, his own morality is likely to vary with 
his surroundings. Many, who in a well-ordered society 
had lived respectable lives, have sadly fallen when they 
went to newer communities, where they found ways 
of living of a low order. When boys and girls go 
from their homes to school or to college, they often find 
a standard of thinking and of acting very different 
from that to which they had been used. What they 
had supposed wrong they sometimes find regarded 
as right, or at least very slightly condemned. It is 
often the same when they go from school out into the 
world. 

The morality that rests upon custom does not really 
belong to the man that practises it. If he be good 
among the good and bad among the bad ; more or less 



i8 



Ethics for Young People. 



honest, according to the habits that are about him; 
high-minded or low-minded, according as others' minds 
are high or low, he has no real virtue of his own. If 
he have what seem to be virtues, it is by a happy acci- 
dent. 

A person that always does what those about him do, 
is like a vessel with a broken rudder, that drifts with 
the winds and the currents, and has no course of its own 
any more than the drifting sea-weed. Such a life is un- 
worthy of any one. Every one should have some moral 
aim, and take the helm of his own life, and steer instead 
of drifting. 

All of this shows the need of some principles of 
morality that are not dependent upon any chance com- 
panionship, and that may belong to the man himself 
and not merely to his surroundings. 



Principles of Morality. 



19 



CHAPTER VII. 

PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

A PRINCIPLE is a starting-point in thought or life. 

Every science has principles which are its starting- 
points. In geometry, these first principles are called 
axioms. If one wishes to show that a proposition in 
geometry is true, he tries to trace it back to one or more 
axioms which nobody disputes. 

It is as when a person is lost in a forest and does not 
know which way to go, if he can find his way back and 
consider afresh the general direction that he should take, 
he can start again with better hope of success. 

Principles in morals furnish such starting-points in 
the activities of our life. 

One may ask in regard to any proposed act or 
speech, " Is it right ?" "Is it kind?" "Is it fair?" 
" Is it true?" 

If these words represent the principles upon which 
one acts and speaks, the answer to these questions will 
show him what he should do. 

In morals, one may have bad principles as well as 
good principles. 

A man whose principle it is always to look out only 
for his own gain, whether the course he takes be right or 
wrong, is a man of bad principles. He asks in regard 
to any course, " Is it profitable?" and acts accordingly. 



20 



Ethics for Young People, 



If one says to him, " This is not right/' " This is not 
kind," or " This is not honest," it does not affect him. 
For the right, the kind, and the honest do not represent 
the principles upon which he acts. 

A man is sometimes spoken of as unprincipled. 
This generally means that he has bad principles. 

A man may seem not to have any principles because 
his actions are so variable. At one moment he may 
speak harshly, at another pleasantly, even when the 
circumstances are very similar. At one time he may 
be generous, at another selfish ; or at one time honest, 
at another dishonest. Thus he may seem to have no 
principles. It may be his principle, however, to do 
at any moment just what he feels like doing. This is 
obviously a form of selfishness, and may be a principle 
like any other. The weathercock is often regarded as 
the very ideal of fickleness. It changes its position so 
often that it seems the type of the lack of steadfastness. 
But the weathercock is not fickle. It is always true to 
the wind, and is thus steadfast in its relation to it. So 
the person of variable moods may be always true 
to the principle of doing what pleases him at the 
moment. 

Persons often do not know what the principles on 
which they act really are. The selfish person would 
hardly admit, even to himself, that his principle is always 
to look out for himself without regard to other people. 
Very few persons will admit that their principle is to do 
always as other people do. 

It would often be helpful to a man if he knew what 



Principles of Morality. 



21 



the principles are on which he acts. If they are poor 
and base he might be ashamed of them and give them 
up. 

Other people often know what a man's principles are 
better than the man himself does. They know them 
just as we know the nature of a plant from its leaves, 
flowers or fruit. A man acts from his real principles, 
and thus he also is known by his fruit. 

A boy or girl that is stingy cannot have generous 
principles. One whose word cannot be trusted cannot 
really mean to tell the truth. One who grumbles when 
any service is asked of him and goes to it unwillingly, 
cannot make it his principle to be helpful. 

All this is plain enough when other people are con- 
cerned. One would think that we might apply the 
same method to ourselves, and find out what our own 
principles are by observing our actions. It would often 
be very helpful. 

Persons who do not have distinctly good principles 
are apt to act, more or less, from bad principles. 

It is so much easier to act selfishly than to look out 
for others, so much easier to go with the crowd than 
against the crowd, that one who does riot really mean 
to take the better course is very apt to take the worse, 
without thinking anything about it. 

" I did not mean to," the boy said, as we all so often 
say, when he had done a piece of mischief by accident. 
" But did you mean not to?" asked the teacher. We 
all do more wrong things by not meaning not to, than 
by meaning to ; that is, from the lack of any good 



22 



Ethics for Young 'People. 



principle rather than from any bad principle which we 
possess consciously. 

The life of Benedict Arnold gives a striking example 
of the wretched results which may spring from the lack 
of good principles that are distinctly held. After tell- 
ing the story of his treachery, Mr. John Fiske says of 
him, " In better days he had shown much generosity of 
nature. Can it be that this is the same man who, on 
the field of Saratoga, saved the life of the poor soldier 
who in honest fight had shot him and broken his leg? 
Such are the strange contrasts that we sometimes see in 
characters that are governed by impulse and not by 
principle. Their virtue may be real enough while it 
lasts, but it does not weather the storm. " 1 

i John Fiske's "The American Revolution," vol. n., page 217. 

k 



The Breaking Up of EtJiics of Custom. 



23 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE BREAKING UP OF THE ETHICS OF CUSTOM. 

We have seen that in the early history of the world 
the rules of morality were not distinct from those of 
custom. There comes a time, however, when the cus- 
toms of a people are so much disturbed that it is im- 
possible for them to continue to be the only rule of 
life. 

This breaking up occurs in part because as life be- 
comes complicated, customs come into collision with one 
another, so that a man cannot follow one without neg- 
lecting another. 

It arises in part, also, from the fact that the people of 
one community come into relations with those of another, 
and find customs different from those to which they 
have been used. 

The condition of such a people is like that of the 
boy or girl who goes from the home to the school, or 
from the school into the world, and finds ways of life 
very different from those that had been familiar. When 
such a time comes in the history of a people, men are 
forced to think for themselves instead of blindly follow- 
ing any custom. Some will try to find out what is 
really right and really wrong. Some will doubt whether 
there is any right or any wrong. 

We have an interesting picture of such a breaking up 



24 



Ethics for Young People, 



of the morality of custom, in the history of Greece. 
One illustration of this may be found in the life of Soc- 
rates. 

The Greeks had certain oracles, the utterances of 
which were recognized as authoritative. Men applied 
to them, in regard to both public and private matters. 
They asked whether they should engage in this or that 
enterprise, and, indeed, sought an answer to any difficult 
question. Socrates claimed that a divine power directed 
him in his life, and especially, it would seem, warned 
him what he should not do. That is, he had a private 
oracle. Here we have an individual acting indepen- 
dently of the custom, It was, in a sense, the introduc- 
tion of the right of private judgment among the Greeks. 
This excited great anger among the people. When, in 
spite of his goodness, he was put to death, one of the 
accusations which were brought against him was that 
he had introduced new divinities. This meant that, 
so far as his private oracle was concerned, he had acted 
independently of the custom of the state. 

In the Greek tragedies there are very striking pic- 
tures of this law of custom. 

One of these tragedies, for example, tells the story 
of Antigone. The king had commanded that no one 
should perform funeral rites for her brother. To per- 
form such rites for those near to one was considered by 
the Greeks one of the most sacred duties. Custom also 
commanded that the king should be obeyed. Antigone 
could not comply with both these requirements. She 
was obliged to choose for herself what she should do. 



The Breaking Up of Ethics of Custom, 25 

She performed the sacred rites for her brother and suf- 
fered the penalty of disobedience to the king. 

When the authority of custom was thus breaking up, 
how could people determine what it was right to do? 
They could act only as the young man or the young 
woman does who goes out into a world of maxims and 
customs that differ from one another and from the 
maxims and customs of home. They must try to find 
certain principles, according to which they can live. 



26 



Ethics for Young People, 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE EPICUREANS. 

As Greece, when it was passing from its childhood 
to its maturity, had to meet the same question which 
the young man or woman has to meet to-day on going 
out into the world, it may be helpful to consider one or 
two of the answers that were given by the Greeks. 

The question was, you will understand, "What are 
the principles according to which life ought to be 
guided?" Some of the answers given by the Greeks 
have become very famous. 

One of the most famous of these is that which was 
given by Epicurus. It was that the true principle of 
living is to get all the happiness that is possible. Men 
should live to get happiness. 

According to this principle, when one questions 
whether he should or should not perform a certain act, 
he should ask himself, whether the doing it, or the not 
doing it, would make him the happier. If it is the tell- 
ing of a lie, or the taking of something that belongs to 
another, or the helping one that needs, the question is 
not, "Is it right?" but, "Will the doing it make me 
happier or unhappier? " 

Epicurus got out of this a better morality than would 
have seemed possible. He showed that one who does 
what is right is, on the whole, happier than one who 



The Epicureans. 



27 



does what is wrong ; that temperance brings more hap- 
piness than intemperance, virtue than vice, honesty 
than dishonesty. He thus taught what was practically 
a lofty morality. 

The morality that is based on the desire of happiness 
has, however, two difficulties. 

The first of these difficulties is, that one who lives 
only to be happy is really less likely to gain happiness 
than one who lives for something else. There is this 
remarkable thing about happiness : those who make 
it their chief business to find it are more apt to fail 
than those who take far less pains about it. 

When one thinks of living for happiness the most 
natural thought is that he wants to live to amuse him- 
self. Now, there is no business that is more exacting 
and wearisome than that of a mere pleasure-seeker. 
He has a routine in his life like everybody else, and a 
routine always tends to become mechanical. The word 
amusement means away from the muses, and implies an 
escape from the serious business of life. When there 
is no such serious business, amusement loses its special 
characteristic and much of its charm. If a boy were 
playing games all day, 'the games would become no 
more interesting than work. 

A second reason why one who lives only for happi- 
ness is less likely to find it is that only a part of his 
life can be lived for pleasure. Few boys, for instance, 
can play games all the time. Most have to go to 
school or do some kind of work. The boy who cares 
only to play is bored by all this, and enjoys himself 



28 



Ethics for Young People. 



only on the playground ; that is, for only a small part of 
the day. The rest of the time, when he is busied with 
his tasks, goes for nothing. He is simply impatient to 
be through with them. The boy who likes his books 
and likes to be helpful at home enjoys himself not 
merely when he is playing, but also when he is working. 
Thus the boy who cares only to play has a good time 
only a small part of the day. One who cares for other 
things has a good time all the day. 

A third and more important reason why living for 
happiness is likely to fail in the end is, that happiness 
for the most part springs from being interested in some- 
thing outside one's self. It comes largely from self-for- 
getfulness, and absorption in something for which one 
likes to live. The mere pleasure-seeker is more shut 
up within himself. His plans all have his self in view. 
He thus more rarely escapes from himself into that free- 
dom where happiness is most likely to be found. 

In these ways we may illustrate the fact that the mere 
pleasure-seeker is not likely to find as much pleasure as 
one who seeks for something else. This is the first 
difficulty in the plan of Epicurus. 

The second difficulty is, that if you make a person 
really feel that pleasure is the great end of life, the 
chances are that he will at once seize the pleasures that 
are nearest and easiest. 

Epicurus taught that temperance brings more pleas- 
ure than intemperance. But what if some one had said, 
" I know that for me, the happiest life would be to eat, 
drink, and be merry.'' He taught that there is more 



The Epicureans. 



29 



happiness in honesty than in dishonesty; but what if 
some one had said, "For myself, I know that this 
money which I could get by a little trickery would 
make me much happier than I could be without it." 
I do not know what he could have said to those who are 
persuaded that happiness could be best reached by 
these means. 

One who is honest simply because he has been taught 
that honesty is the best policy, will probably become 
dishonest when he thinks that honesty will not pay. 

The word Epicure is derived from Epicurus. Now, 
Epicurus would seem not to have been a man such as 
we call an Epicure. The word, however, shows that 
the world has felt that the tendency of his teaching 
would be to make Epicures. 

We should all seek happiness, it is true; but we 
should have for the great object of our lives something 
larger and better than happiness. 

We should not do right, and be kind and helpful, 
merely because we think that in this way we shall some- 
how get more happiness for ourselves. We should do 
right because it is right, and be kind and helpful because 
we care for those about us. 

At the same time we may learn from Epicurus that, 
so far as we seek happiness, we must seek it in the way 
of virtue ; and that vice, sooner or later, brings unhap- 
piness. 



30 Ethics for Young People. 



CHAPTER X, 

4 THE STOICS. 

ANOTHER principle of conduct which was set forth 
among the Greeks, and which has also become very 
famous, was taught by the Stoics. 

The teaching of the Stoics was that we should let 
nothing disturb our self-command and the repose of 
mind that springs from that. We should always be 
masters of ourselves. 

Suppose that a man who was very rich has lost all 
his property. He is perhaps wholly cast down and 
wretched. The Stoic would say to him, "What have 
you lost? Your money was not a part of you." So, 
if one is suffering pain and ready to despair, the Stoic 
would say, " Will you let the pain of your body disturb 
the peace of your mind?" 

Thus to the Stoic his mind, that is, his self, was a 
fortress which he would defend against all attacks. He 
would be lord of himself, no matter what might hap- 
pen. 

According to the Stoics, it should not be the great 
object of a man to live happily, or even to live at all. 
Our principle should be that while we live we should live 
wisely and well. It is not important under what circum- 
stances we live, whether we be rich or poor, admired or 
despised. It is important that we make the best use of 
our circumstances, whatever they may be. 



The Stoics 



3i 



We may take an example from the stage. It does 
not matter to a great actor what part he plays, whether 
it be that of a king or a beggar, but only that he plays 
his part well. We applaud an actor, not because he 
wears a crown or lives in splendor, but because, even 
if he is in rags, he plays his part grandly. In life, 
we are apt to think of the part we play as though it were 
the most important thing; and we are apt to judge 
men from the place they fill, rather than from the way 
in which they fill it. 

Epictetus, a famous Stoic, took an illustration from 
the game of ball. In playing ball, he tells us, no one con- 
tends for the ball itself, as though it were either a good 
or an evil. Each player thinks only how he may best 
throw it or catch it. The interest of the game does not 
lie in the possession of the ball, but in the skill with 
which the player catches and throws it. He means that 
the outward things of life have in themselves no value ; 
but that they are to be prized only for the skill with 
which we use them. 

Indeed, it is true that the happiest persons in the 
world, and the most useful, have not been the richest or 
the most prosperous. They have been oftener those 
with whom the world has dealt less kindly, but who have 
known best how to use whatever came to them. 

There were many noble men among the Stoics ; es- 
pecially among the Romans, whose strong and stern 
natures made them fit subjects for this teaching. There 
was Epictetus, from whom I have just quoted. He was 
not born in Rome, though much of his life was passed 



32 



Ethics for Young People, 



there. He began life as a slave, but later he obtained 
his freedom. There was, also, Marcus Aurelius, the 
Emperor, who taught the doctrine of the Stoics. We 
can still gain help from the writings of the Emperor, as 
well as from those of the freedman, Epictetus. This 
fact may illustrate the teaching of the Stoics, that circum- 
stances in themselves are of small account. 

As we have received from Epicurus the word Epi- 
cure, so from the Stoics we have received the word Sto- 
icism, which is used to-day to express a certain kind of 
character and disposition. 

Stoicism is the habit of mind that takes all things 
calmly, that is calm in peril, and peaceful in the midst 
of pain and misfortune. 

There is a higher morality than that of Stoicism ; but 
Stoicism is something not to be despised. Indeed, every 
man ought to be a bit of a Stoic, whatever higher virtues 
he may possess. 

A certain amount of Stoicism forms the best basis 
lipon which the higher virtues can rest. By this I mean 
that fortitude, courage, patience, and the like, should 
make the character strong ; while love, sympathy, and 
helpfulness make it beautiful. 

We shall now consider some of the Stoical virtues, 
and also some others which resemble Stoicism in that 
they relate to the management of one's own life without 
special reference to the happiness and welfare of others. 



Fortitude. 



33 



CHAPTER XL 

FORTITUDE, 

THE word Fortitude is most often used to signify the 
brave bearing of pain or other suffering. 

It does not mean insensibility to pain, for some per- 
sons whose natures are very sensitive have shown the 
greatest fortitude. It means a self-command by which 
one preserves his independence, and does not let the 
pain of the body too much disturb the peace of the 
mind. 

Fortitude is a virtue of which the Stoics made great 
account, both in their teaching and in their lives. When 
the word Stoicism is used to-day, in the more general 
sense to which I have referred, and without reference to 
the ancient Stoics, this heroic bearing of pain is what it 
most often means. 

A fine example of this is found in the life of Epicte- 
tus, the Stoic. While he was a slave, it is said, his mas- 
ter, one day, was beating him cruelly. Epictetus said 
calmly, " If you do not look out you will break my leg." 
Presently, at a still heavier stroke, the bone snapped. 
" There," said Epictetus, as calmly as before, " I told 
you you would break it." 

Every boy ought to be enough of a Stoic to bear a 
certain amount of p-ain without outcry or flinching. 

Indeed, boys do show much of this stoicism in their 



34 



Ethics for Young People. 



plays. In base-ball, for instance, or in foot-ball, there 
is often great suffering, which the looker-on would never 
suspect unless he saw the blow, or the fall which 
caused the pain. 

This stoicism may be, in part, the result of a strong 
will. The boy is determined not to lose his self-com- 
mand. He orders his nature to hold out, and not let 
itself be conquered by this attack. 

This self-command really lessens the pain. Never is 
it so hard as when the will gives up and lets the suffer- 
ing have it all its own w r ay. 

In a winter morning one boy goes crouching with 
the cold. He will feel it ten times as much as another 
who puts a brave front upon it, takes a pride in meet- 
ing it. The latter is really less cold, for the blood is 
quickened with the manly will and warms the body to the 
fingers' ends. 

Physicians tell us that in hospitals some patients die 
simply because they give up to their disease ; while 
others get well, simply because they keep a strong will, 
and do not surrender. Such power has the mind over 
the body. 

This self-command may be helped by a proper pride. 
It is manly thus to bear what one has to bear. 

When a boy gives way too easily to any pain, he is 
called by his companions a " cry-baby." This word 
means that he has no manliness. A baby is not ex- 
pected to have self-command, or any pride that would 
keep it from crying at any sufferings however slight* 

We often see an amusing example of this pride when 



Fortitude. 



35 



a man falls on some slippery place in the street. When 
he gets up, however much he may be suffering or mor- 
tified, he is apt to look about him with a smile, as if he 
thought it an excellent joke. He does not want people 
to think that his spirit fell with his body. 

This self-command is helped still more by interest in 
other tilings. 

The boy who is wounded in a game is so full of eager- 
ness that this helps him to forget his pain. So, in a 
battle, the wounded soldier may, till the fight is over, 
hardly realize his suffering ; and even then he may 
forget it in the triumph of the victory or in the shame 
of the defeat. 

The early Christians were so full of the fervor of re- 
ligious faith and love, that, in the persecutions under 
the Romans, they seem hardly to have felt the smart of 
the flames, or the tearing of the wild beasts. 

The self-command that has been spoken of is often 
shown by turning the thought away from the suffering 
and fixing it upon something that interests and distracts 
the mind. 

If one would bear the evils of life heroically, it is im- 
portant that he should learn to interest himself in 
things outside himself, so that he can occupy his mind, 
and not be too much troubled by bodily ills. 

So if one would help another bear any suffering, he 
should not merely pity, and condole with him ; he 
should try to interest him in something : perhaps in a 
book that he reads to him, or in some plan that he dis- 
cusses with him. 



36 



Ethics for Young People. 



Every person should train himself to bear pain 
nobly; not by tormenting himself, but by making 
the least possible fuss about anything that is painful 
or unpleasant. He will find chances enough for this 
training in fortitude without making them for himself. 



Courage. 



37 



CHAPTER XII. 

COURAGE. - 

COURAGE is another of the Stoic virtues, and, like 
fortitude, is one form of self-command. 

As fortitude consists in bearing manfully that which 
is painful or disagreeable, courage consists in not shrink- 
ing from what is painful or disagreeable. 

You know how you would manage with a shying 
horse. The horse sees something by the roadside that 
he is unwilling to pass. He wants, if he must go by it 
at all, to make a great sweep around it ; but what he 
would rather do is to turn around and make off in the 
opposite direction as fast as he can. But you, whom we 
suppose to be riding, want to keep on your own 
course. Then, too, you think the horse should be 
trained. You want to make him know that what he is 
afraid of is only a stump, or something quite as harm- 
less. So you press him on, quietly but firmly, till you 
bring him close up to the object of his fear. Then his 
fear is all gone, and the next time you pass you will 
probably have less trouble. 

He will learn also to trust you, because he has seen 
that you are wiser than he ; so the next time, he will be 
likely to approach what he is afraid of, if he finds that 
you think it is all right. 

Do you not think that you are as much worth train- 



38 



Ethics for Young People. 



ing as a horse? Do not you sometimes want to shy 
and to baulk? And do you not need then to make 
yourself feel the bit and the spur? 

Some boys dread to get up on a cold morning. How 
they lie till the last possible moment, shivering with 
dread, going through in imagination the shock of the 
cold air over and over again, and having all the pain of 
a dozen starts, before they make the real start. 

Or here is a poor little fellow who is suffering with 
the toothache. How he dreads to have the wretched 
thing out, how he puts off the moment, making all 
manner of excuses for the delay. All the while, he has 
both the real pain of the tooth and the imagined pain 
of the pulling, which is almost always a great deal worse 
than that which the dentist really causes. 

We all have a great many unpleasant things to do in 
life, and a great many persons make themselves much 
extra and needless pain in such ways as I have de- 
scribed. They lack courage and resolution. So, instead 
of doing the thing at once and being through with it, 
they multiply the evil over and over again by hesitation 
and dread. 

Every person should make it a principle to train 
himself to quick resolve and action in all these matters. 

If there is a hard or unpleasant thing to be done, he 
should take pride in facing it at once like a man, just as, 
if he were riding, he would take pride in bringing his 
horse promptly and quietly up to the dreaded stump. 

He should take pride in having himself under com- 
mand, so that he shall not make life mean and miser- 
able by petty shrinking or fear. 



Courage. 



39 



So, if it is only getting up on a cold morning, or 
learning a hard lesson, or doing a bit of disagreeable 
work, one should form the habit of meeting the thing 
at once, and of being through with it. In this way, one 
will have, not merely the sense of relief that the thing 
is done, but a sense of manhood and self-command, 
which is one of the pleasantest things in life. 

An old farmer used to tell his boys, when they had 
a tough bit of wood to split, to strike right at the middle 
of the knot. 

It is a good rule for life, to strike right at the heart 
of any difficulty. 

If you have an unpleasant duty to perform, do it 
promptly and cheerfully. It will be better done, and you 
will be stronger and happier. 



4o 



Ethics for Young People. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

COURAGE {continued}) 

The word courage is most often used to mean the 
resolute facing of danger. In this sense it may be 
compared with cowardice on the one side, and reckless- 
ness on the other. 

The coward is one who, in any relation of life, exag- 
gerates the danger. When we think of it, we see that 
there is no condition in which we are absolutely safe. 
A mad dog might run into this room at this very 
moment and bite us all. The house might take fire. 
When we go into the street, a runaway horse might 
knock us down, or we might meet a person that has the 
small-pox. 

All these things, and a great many others, might hap- 
pen ; but we know that no one of them is likely to 
happen, and so we do not trouble our heads about 
them. We take what precautions seem necessary, and 
then live as if we were absolutely safe. 

The coward is one who, under some circumstances, 
sees these unlikely things as if they would probably 
happen. Instead of looking at the regular course of 
events, he sees only these almost impossible chances. 
If he is in a boat, he expects that she will go the bot- 
tom ; or if in a train, that it will run off the track. 

Sometimes such cowardice is constitutional. It is 



Cozirage. 



41 



like a disease. I knew once a very learned and wise 
man who would never trust himself on a railway train. 
I have seen him going down to the station, dressed in 
his best, before the train was to start ; and when it had 
gone, I have seen him going home again. He had 
actually been afraid to get into the car. A dog would 
put him into a great panic. People would, of course, 
laugh a little about it; but they thought none the worse 
of him, for they saw that his fear was like a disease 
that he could not help. 

No one likes to be thought a coward ; for, in the 
whole history of the world, a coward has been looked 
upon with great scorn. 

This is for two reasons. One is that cowardice often 
implies a lack of common sense. The coward does 
not see things as they are. That which is so unlikely 
that we can leave it wholly out of the account, the cow- 
ard looks upon as sure to happen. 

Another reason why the coward is despised is that 
he lacks manliness and fortitude. He not only thinks 
the evil will be sure to come ; he thinks he cannot bear 
it, if it does. The brave man thinks less of the possibil- 
ity of the evil ; but if the evil does come, he means to 
bear it like a man. 

Recklessness is just the opposite of cowardice. As 
the coward sees danger where there is, practically 
speaking, none, the reckless man does not see it where 
it actually exists. 

The reckless boy, after the first cold night, will skate 
out over the deep water, without thinking whether the 



42 



Ethics for Young People. 



ice is strong enough to bear. He will go out in his 
boat, in a high wind, without calculating the strength 
of the wind as compared with his own strength and 
skill. 

This in a sense is bravery, but it is not the real brav- 
ery. If a child sits playing on the railway track when 
the train is coming, we do not say, "How brave that 
child is ! " We think that it has not wit enough to know 
its danger. So, such cases as I have referred to are 
what we call /^/-hardiness ; that is, they show the 
courage of a fool, rather than that of a brave man ; for 
in these cases the boy or the man rushes into danger of 
which he does not dream. 

The really brave man does not overlook the danger. 
He does not let his mind dwell upon it ; but if it exists 
he knows just what it is. He takes, however, two things 
into the account. 

One of these is his own strength and skill. His no- 
tion of these is not based upon vanity. He has tried 
himself, and knows pretty well what he is able to do. 

Another thing that he considers, is the occasion of 
the risk, if there is any. A man who would rush into 
a burning house simply to show his courage, we should 
call a fool. When the fireman goes in, perhaps to save 
a child, he goes knowing all the danger, though he does 
not stop to think of this ; but he feels that it is his duty, 
and he is willing to risk his own life in the hope of sav- 
ing that of another. Thus we admire him for his cour- 
age as well as for his self-forgetfulness, and his high 
sense of moral obligation. 



Heroism. 



43 



CHAPTER XIV. 

HEROISM. 

The persons who are thus brave in a good cause are 
called heroes. I suppose there has never been a coun- 
try or a time which had not its heroes. 

When we look back at the history of the world, we 
see how much we owe to these heroes of the past. We 
owe to them our liberties, and indeed all that makes 
life really worth having. 

There is no reading more interesting and more help- 
ful than the lives and deeds of such heroes. Such 
reading is helpful, because it makes us feel how grand 
it is to be heroic, and may make us resolve to catch 
something of the same spirit. 

It would be a great mistake to think that the names 
of all the heroes are written in history. There have 
been many heroic lives which have been humble and 
unknown, but which deserve the admiration of the 
world just as much as those that have been more fa- 
mous. They perhaps sometimes deserve our honor 
more ; because those who lived them knew that they 
should never receive honor from men. After a battle, 
men celebrate the deeds of the leaders in the fight ; but 
there has been just as much bravery among the pri- 
vates, whose names are never heard out of their own 
little circle ; and the fortune of the day depended as 



44 



Ethics for Young People. 



much upon their courage, as upon the ability of the 
general in command. 

There is one danger in reading these stories of heroic 
lives. They may sometimes make us feel as if we were 
also heroes, when, perhaps, there is very little that is 
heroic in our lives. We think what we would do if 
some great occasion offered, and it does not occur to us 
that we are cowards in the little occasions that meet us 
any day. 

A boy, for instance, walks along the street, thinking 
of the knights, the stories of whose exploits he has been 
reading. He wishes that he could have lived in these 
old times, and thinks what a brave knight he would 
have been, how he would have protected oppressed 
ladies, and would have fought the cruel and false 
knights in the face of any odds. As he thinks about 
all this, he sees a boy tip over the table of a poor apple- 
woman by the sidewalk, and then run away and jeer at 
her from a little distance. Now, the boy that was 
dreaming about the knights-errant pities the poor 
woman, and would like to stop and help her pick up 
her apples ; but he does not, for he is afraid that he 
shall be laughed at. He feels very angry with the boy 
that played the cruel trick on her, and would like to 
punish him ; but he is afraid that the other might 
prove to be the stronger. So he passes on, and gives 
no sign of the pity or the anger that he feels. I hope, 
however, that he does not imagine himself any longer 
to be a brave knight of the olden time, for he has shown 
that he is nothing but a sneak and a coward. 



Heroism, 



45 



From this illustration it will appear that there are a 
great many opportunities for heroism in the life of an 
ordinary man, and even of a boy or girl. 

It requires, sometimes, a great deal of heroism for a 
boy to do right, or even not to do wrong, when his 
companions may make fun of him for it. They may 
sometimes call him a coward simply because he is so 
brave, while they are the cowards who go with the ma- 
jority against their will. 

It requires heroism to stand up for one whom others 
are tormenting because he is weak, or a stranger, or, 
for some fancied reason, happens to be unpopular. 

It sometimes requires heroism to interfere to save 
some poor animal that is being abused and tormented. 

Fighting is not generally a good thing ; but if a boy 
fights let it be for some good cause such as I have 
named ; for the protection of the weak and for the safety 
of the suffering, rather than in a quarrel about some 
personal matter. Such fighting is in the spirit of the 
heroes whose deeds we so much admire. 



46 



Ethics for Young People. 



CHAPTER XV. 

DIFFERENT KINDS OF HEROES. 

If we knew what a man really admires, we might 
form some guess as to what sort of a man he is, or at 
least as to what sort of a man he is likely to be. This, 
of course, applies only to moral qualities ; since a very 
plain person, for example, may admire beauty, and a 
weak person may admire strength, all the more for not 
possessing it. 

Even so far as moral qualities are concerned, the 
principle has exceptions which we need not consider 
here. There is truth enough in it to show that it is of 
great importance to consider what are the qualities that 
we really admire. 

An Indian was once looking at some portraits of 
other Indians. There was one which represented a 
person of mild and thoughtful character. It was the 
one which we perhaps should have selected as the most 
pleasing of them all. But the savage did not like it. 
That, he thought, was a pretty poor kind of Indian. 
There was another picture that represented a chief who 
was stern and fierce ; who seemed as if he would shrink 
from no act of cruelty. This, the Indian, who was him- 
self wholly uncivilized and fresh from the wilderness, 
thought was an Indian worthy of the name. This ad- 
miration showed what he was at heart, and tended to 
make him more and more like that which he admired. 



Different Kinds of Heroes. 



47 



Because our admirations have so much importance, it 
is well to consider a little what kind of persons are ad- 
mired by different people. The world has always 
admired its heroes. It is worth while, then, to notice 
that there are different kinds of heroes, some of whom 
are worthy of admiration and some are not. 

Courage, strength, energy, skill, grace, — all these are 
worthy of admiration, even when they are displayed in 
sport. So far as they are within the reach of any one, 
they are worth being imitated as well as admired. 
They certainly do not represent the highest kind of 
heroism. They should not be admired to the exclusion 
of better types ; but they may well receive the enthusi- 
astic applause that is sometimes given to them. 

There is something that sometimes passes for heroism 
which is not heroism at all, and which deserves only 
contempt. This is found in those who show their 
strength only at the expense of tlie weak. A " bully" is 
a person who likes to make those who are w r eaker than 
himself fear and obey him. The "bully" is sometimes 
found on the playground as well as in the larger life of 
the world. There are often some with whom he passes 
for a hero. He is apt, however, to be a coward. If he 
were not, he would choose the strong rather than the 
weak to measure himself against. 

There are others who are called heroes, who have 
really strength and courage ; who face real peril bravely ? 
but who do this that they may win something that does 
not belong to them. They rob and oppress and injure. 

Among these false heroes are the pirates and banditti 



48 Ethics for Young People. 



who are the admiration sometimes of boys that have 
seen very little of real life. Their ideal of a hero is some 
sort of robber-king. 

The stories of wild, free life in which the buccanneer 
or the pirate figures, may have a certain fascination, 
but they have this for us only when we look at them 
from the outside. I mean that it is when we consider 
the courage and the craft, and forget those who are 
robbed or slain. 

If a man should creep into your house, should steal 
whatever he could lay his hands on, should perhaps kill 
some member of the household, should brave the 
police, and should escape with his booty, he would 
have shown courage and skill ; but I think you would 
hardly admire him, even if he gave a part of his plun- 
der to the poor. Now the pirate or the bandit is only 
the same mean thief dressed up in gayer clothes, and 
surrounded by more picturesque associations. He is 
like a carrion bird dressed out in gay plumage. We 
may admire the plumage ; but we can have only disgust 
for the poor figure that is left, when the feathers are 
torn away. 

We may learn how much the qualities of daring and 
of adroitness are really worth, when we see them admired 
and perhaps cannot quite help admiring them ourselves, 
even in such wretched associations as we have just con- 
sidered. 

Of very much the same stamp are many of those 
whom the world admires. I mean the great conquerors 
who have sought to win glory and power and even * 



Different Kinds of Heroes. 



49 



wealth for themselves, without regard to the happiness 
or to the rights of others. Many of the heroes that the 
world honors are thus no better than the buccanneer or 
the bandit that the schoolboy has taken for his hero. 

In such cases we may admire the powers which are 
shown by the world's conqueror; but these must not 
blind us to the real nature of his deeds. He has finer 
feathers than the bandit king, but is, at heart, the same 
mean and selfish being. 

What is meaner than for one man to cause the death 
of thousands, to take away all the joy of countless 
homes, simply that the world may say what a great 
man he is, and bow down before him? 

It is a great lesson which the world has been slow to 
learn, to find that meanness and selfishness are always 
the same, no matter how fine a dress they wear, or how 
many unite to shout their praise. 

How different is military glory when it is won in the 
defence of one's country, or in that of the oppressed, from 
what it is when it is sought merely for its own sake. I 
think that the world will sometime outgrow its admira- 
tion for the glory that is won for selfish ends alone, but 
it will never outgrow its reverence for patriotism and a 
chivalry that is impatient of any wrong which is inflicted 
upon the weak. 

There is no kind of service to mankind that has not 
had its heroes. There have been heroes for truth, for 
justice, for philanthropy. 

There could be no heroism more worthy of honor 
than that of Dorothea Dix, who devoted her life to the 



5o 



Ethics for Young People. 



relief of the terrible suffering of the insane in this coun- 
try. She was a woman with delicate health and, at first, 
without money or prominent friends ; yet she caused 
a revolution in the treatment of the insane. 

You have no idea to what cruelty the insane had 
been exposed. They had been kept in filth, without 
fire or comfort of any kind. This neglect was not be- 
cause people were so cruel ; it was simply because they 
thought that this was the way to treat the insane. 

Miss Dix, moved by her intense pity, used all her 
great energy and good sense, travelled from state to 
state, and from country to country, aroused interest in 
others, and guided the interest which she had aroused. 
New hospitals were built, wiser and tenderer care was 
used, better methods were introduced; so that now we 
can hardly believe that things ever were so bad as they 
were before her day. 1 

I will mention another hero who was very different, 
but who showed his heroism also in reference to the 
insane. 

Charles Lamb was a writer of charming essays, 2 full 
of wit and fancy. He seemed to the world as far as 
possible from a hero ; yet his life was heroic. He was 
engaged to be married to a woman whom he tenderly 
loved ; but his sister became insane and killed their 
mother, and he gave up all his plans, and lived for her. 
He undertook to take care of her. She lived with him ; 
only when her attacks of insanity returned, he took her 



1 See the Life of Dorothea Dix, by Francis Tiffany. 

2 The Essays of Elia. 



Different Kinds of Heroes. 



to a hospital till she had recovered. It was a sad sight 
to see the brother and sister walking across the fields to 
the hospital together, when she felt that the trouble was 
coming on. His life was lived for this sister, so sweet 
and lovely when she was herself, so wild and ungovern- 
able when her fits of insanity came upon her; who in 
her insanity had committed that terrible deed. This 
was, you must remember, while the insane, in general, 
were treated with the cruelty that I have described. 

I have in mind many heroes of all kinds, to whose 
lives I should gladly refer, but I have no space. 
They are found in all forms of life. There are railway 
engineers, who, when they saw that a collision could 
not be avoided, have remained at their place to lighten, 
if possible, the shock, and have been killed ; sea cap- 
tains, who have remained at their posts till all others had 
left, and have gone down with their ships; physicians 
and nurses, and sisters of charity, who have not shrunk 
from pestilence in order to save life, or to comfort the 
dying. There was Father Damien, a catholic priest, 
who so pitied the lepers, who were confined to an island, 
deprived alike of the comforts of this world and of the 
consolation of religion, that he went to live with them. 
He knew that when he once joined them he should 
probably take their disease, and, in any case, could 
never leave them. But he went to them and shared 
their lot, living and dying with them, seeking to do them 
good. 

I would advise each of you to keep a book of heroes, 
and put down in it the names of all the heroic persons 



52 



Ethics for Young People. 



of whom you read in history, or in the newspapers, or 
of whom you hear in your daily life. You can make 
divisions and classes of heroes, according to the purpose 
of their acts, whether for patriotism, or science, or phil- 
anthropy, or religion, or whatever cause. Then you 
can decide who are the greatest heroes, and whom you 
would rather be like. Only remember that keeping a 
book of heroes is not to be heroic ; seek really to be a 
hero in your own life. 

There are many who have been heroes in the most 
common lives ; boys and girls who have sacrificed many 
pleasures to obtain an education ; boys and girls who 
have given up the idea of an education, because they 
felt that they were too much needed by their parents or 
by their younger brothers or sisters; those who have 
given up the dearest plans, or the most attractive pleas- 
ures, for the sake of those who were dependent upon 
them. It is as heroic to give up one's pleasure for the 
sake of the sick at home, as to go to serve in a hospital. 
Heroism needs no setting-off of romance to be worthy 
of the name. 

Such unpretending heroes as I have described are 
worthy to have their names in your hero-book; and to 
be imitated in your lives. 



Contentment. 



S3 



CHAPTER XVI. 

CONTENTMENT. 

FOR contentment are needed both the fortitude and 
the courage of which we have been speaking: fortitude 
to bear cheerfully whatever may be disagreeable in the 
present; and courage to meet bravely the uncertainties 
of the future. 

The habit of discontent is something like cowardice. 
As cowardice sees all possible elements of danger, but 
does not see the elements of safety which far outbalance 
the others, so discontent sees only what is unpleasant, 
and overlooks the mass of pleasant things which for the 
most part outnumber them. 

As there is always, theoretically speaking, some vague 
and remote possibility of the perils that cowardice fears, 
so discontent is never wholly without reason. In every 
life there are actually some things which are not agree- 
able. Discontent sees them and thus justifies itself. 
Its mistake is that it sees these alone, or out of all pro- 
portion with other things. 

If you are discontented, the feeling is probably based 
upon something which is really unpleasant, and you 
may, in thinking upon this, feel that your discontent is 
justified. What you have to consider, however, is 
whether this bit of discomfort is not outweighed by 
pleasant things, and whether you are right in letting 



54 



Ethics for Young People. 



this take away the comfort of your life. There is rather 
a slangy proverb which has a good deal of common 
sense in it. It says of something that one does not 
fancy, " If you do not like it, you must lump it." That 
is, you must not take it by itself, but let it find its place 
in the whole of your life. 

There is a story of a man who determined that one 
person in the world should be perfectly happy. He 
found a poor woman living most wretchedly, took 
her out of her wretchedness, gave her a nice little cot- 
tage, with a pleasant garden, and clothing and money 
and all that seemed needed for her comfort. In a year 
he came to see her to hear the story of her happiness, 
but he found her as wretched as ever. Her neighbor 
had a pea-hen, the voice of which was so unpleasant to 
her that it took away all her pleasure, and she was 
as unhappy as she was at first. This woman was per- 
fectly right in not liking the voice of the pea-hen, which 
is certainly not musical ; but she was wrong in letting 
this single bit of unpleasantness take away her satisfac- 
tion in all the pleasant things that were around her. 

It might be thought that the habit of discontent 
would bring its own cure. Certainly it brings its own 
punishment. We often try to correct faults by showing 
the unhappiness that they will bring ; but the habit of 
discontent, by its very nature, brings unhappiness, so 
that the connection between the two does not need to 
be pointed out. 

It is as if at a table there were several dishes of sweet 
and pleasant food, and one of food that is bitter to the 



Contentment. 5 5 

taste ; and a person should take of the bitter food and 
mingle it with all the rest, so that nothing should be 
agreeable, and should then complain of the bitterness of 
all. So the habit of discontent spoils the more abun- 
dant good, by spreading over it the less abundant evil. 

Strange as it may seem, however, the habit of discon- 
tent brings certain satisfactions with it. 

One of these is that it is associated with a certain feel- 
ing of superiority . The discontented person often thinks 
that great dissatisfaction with that to which other persons 
submit quietly, shows a greater delicacy of nature than 
these others possess. 

Hans Christian Andersen tells a story of a queen who 
wished her son to marry only a true princess ; so she 
devised a test by which the true princess should be 
known. She piled on the bedstead half a dozen beds, 
and under the lowest of these she placed a rose-leaf. 
She made one and another, for whom the hand of the 
prince was sought, sleep on the bed thus prepared. 
When they came down in the morning and said that 
they had slept beautifully, her thought was, " Ah, you 
are not a true princess. 5 ' At last, one came down in 
the morning saying that she had had a fearful night, and 
was all black and blue ; for there was something hard 
in the bed which took away all her peace. She had 
felt the rose-leaf under all the feathers that buried it; 
and by this the queen recognized the true princess. 

There are those who think that to be troubled by 
every little annoyance shows their superiority, as if they 
were true princes and princesses. They might as well 
be proud of a poor digestion, or of a lame leg. 



56 



Ethics for Young People. 



The habit of discontent has another satisfaction some- 
what similar to this. The dissatisfied person has enjoy- 
ment in flunking that his surroundings are very far 
below his deserts. He has such a sense of his own im- 
portance that he feels injured by anything that is not 
quite to his satisfaction, and this sense of injury increases 
the sense of personal importance. 

This kind of discontent may perhaps be lessened if 
the discontented person should really ask himself how 
it is that he has deserved so much ; what he is or what 
he has done, by which he can claim to have only 
pleasant things in the world, while so many have so 
much suffering. 

It may be helpful to think of others, good and true, 
who cheerfully bear evils, compared with which those 
that cause the discontent are as nothing. 

The habit of discontent arises, in general, from the 
mistake of supposing that any arrangement of outward 
things can in itself make us happy. Certainly, it is eas- 
ier to be happier in some circumstances than in others; 
but none in themselves can bring happiness. 

Every one should learn the art of living, and this art 
consists in being able to use the circumstances of life, 
and not to be at their mercy ; to live cheerfully even 
when everything is not precisely as one would have it. 

You have seen the pretty wood carvings that are 
made in Switzerland. You would be surprised to find 
with how simple an apparatus they are made. You go 
into the workshop and expect to find a great array of tools. 
You find, perhaps, a young man with nothing but a piece 



Contentment. 



57 



of wood and a jack-knife. So out of the simplest ma- 
terials, and with the poorest tools, many have carved 
beautiful lives which have been a joy to themselves 
and those about them. 

But, after all, this is very much a matter of habit. 
We see what we look for, and what we are in the habit 
of seeing. One used to correcting proof, for instance, 
will see at a glance a page disfigured by typographical 
errors that another would never notice; simply because 
he has made it his habit to look for them. 

So, one that has formed the habit of seeing unpleasant 
things will see them and perhaps will see little else ; 
while one in the habit of paying more attention to what 
is pleasant than to what is unpleasant will find what is 
pleasant at almost every turn. 

There are few things that are more important for the 
happiness of life than to form a habit of taking a cheer- 
ful view of the circumstances in which one is placed. 



58 



Ethics for Young People. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

AMBITION. 

The habit of contentment which we have been consid- 
ering may, in some respects, be carried too far. One 
may be too contented. While we should make the best 
of things that cannot be changed, and not let our lives 
be poisoned by discontent, it is a mistake and even a 
fault to be satisfied with what can without loss or injury 
be made better. 

This sort of contentment sometimes takes the form 
of shiftlessness. We sometimes pass a house in the 
country where the gates are off the hinges, the fences 
are broken, the grounds are full of weeds, when a little 
labor would make all these things right. We think that 
the man who lives there takes things too easily. 
He is too contented. He needs a little dissatisfaction 
to spur him on. 

The habit of mind that seeks to excel is called am- 
bition. 

Ambition may be a very good or a very bad thing, 
according to its object. As it is the powder in the gun 
that sends the ball whizzing on its way for good or for 
evil, so it is ambition that gives energy and movement 
to the life. It is as important to have ambition directed 
rightly as it is to have a loaded gun pointed in the right 
way; but a life without ambition is of little more use 
than a gun without powder. 



Ambition. 



59 



A true ambition may be directed to improving the cir- 
cumstances of ones life. It is a good ambition for a 
poor boy to think that he will work hard, and will some 
day have a comfortable home for himself and those 
whom he loves. Even the ambition to be rich is often 
a worthy one ; only it must be remembered that riches 
may be purchased at too dear a price. 

It is a worthy ambition to do well whatever one does. 
This is an ambition which nobody should be without. 
Even in the play-ground one should have an ambition 
to play well, to be a good pitcher or catcher, or to excel 
in whatever part one has to play. A boy who is care- 
less and indifferent in a game of ball will not be likely to 
accomplish much anywhere. 

We like to see even a horse ambitious, and not mov- 
ing only as fast as the whip forces it. We like to see a 
workman ambitious to turn out good work, whether it 
be a stone wall that he is building, or shoes that he is 
making. We like to see a scholar ambitious to take a 
good place in his class, and to have his lesson perfectly. 

This sort of ambition makes play even of the hardest 
work, for it puts life into everything that one does ; 
while the lack of ambition will make work even of play, for 
if one has no interest to do well what one is doing, then 
even base-ball is little better than a task. 

Above all, one should be ambitious to do tlie best 
things. 

There are all sorts of ambitions in life. We laugh at 
the small boy the height of whose ambition is to strut 
through the street with a cigarette in his mouth. We 



6o 



Ethics for Young People, 



despise the young man whose ambition is to be a little 
faster than his fellows. We have also a contempt for 
the man who is simply trying to get rich while he cares 
nothing for the good opinion of his fellow citizens, noth- 
ing for honesty or honor, or for the needs of those that 
he can help. 

We admire the ambition of one who means to be a 
manly man, to be a kindly friend, to get on in the world 
himself and to help others get on in it ; who, in a word, 
means to be an honorable and useful citizen, and to 
make the w T orld better and happier. 



Education as a Duty. 



61 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

EDUCATION AS A DUTY. 

We have seen that the ambition to make the most 
and the best of one's self is worthy of all praise. One 
of the most important helps in accomplishing this end 
is education. To obtain an education so far as is pos- 
sible is thus one of the first duties which one owes to 
one's self. 

By education, I mean the teaching which one may 
receive at home, at school, at college or elsewhere, and 
also that which one may give to one's self. 

Boys and girls go to school, — some because they 
have to, and some as a mere matter of course. Perhaps 
very few ask themselves what is the real good of going 
to school. This I will now try to explain. 

Men differ from the lower animals, in part, because 
whatever one generation of men gains is passed on to 
the next, so that each starts with some little advantage 
over the one that went before it. 

Each generation of animals, so far as we now know 
them, starts just where the former generation started. 

That is, each generation of birds builds its nests in 
the same way in which birds of its kind have built them, 
so far as we know anything about them. So the bees 
make honey and the beavers make dams just as their 
parents and grand-parents have done for centuries. 



62 



Ethics for Young People. 



There was probably a time in the past when the present 
skill was reached by slow and hardly perceptible ad- 
vance ; but so far as our definite knowledge goes, there 
has been little, if any, change from generation to gener- 
ation. 

There is, also, this difference between man and the 
lower animals, that what man does he has to learn how 
to do, while the animals are able to do the most that 
they accomplish by what we call instinct ; that is, with- 
out having to learn how. 

Some things, indeed, that seem most natural to them, 
the animals have to learn. Thus the birds would not 
sing unless they heard other birds sing. If a bird is 
brought up with birds of a different kind, it will often 
sing their song instead of that which belongs to it. 
Thus the canary has to be put, as we might say, to 
school to an older canary that is a good singer, or it 
could not sing any more than a child that has never 
been taught. But most things that the animals do, they 
do without teaching. I suppose the bees would make 
honey, and the birds would build their nests, and the 
beavers would make dams, even if they had never seen 
these things done by their parents. 

You can now see why boys and girls should go to 
school. 

It is in order that they may get the best experience of all 
the generations that have gone before, and may make a 
fair start with the one that is just beginning. A boy or 
girl who is not taught the most important of these re- 
sults of past ages, might just as well have been born 



Education as a Duty. 



63 



hundreds of years ago in a savage hut. The boy or girl 
who is unwilling to be taught is trying to throw away the 
advantage of living to-day, and is really seeking to have 
no better start in life than a savage boy or girl could 
have that was born hundreds of years ago. 

I have said that the boy or the girl is taught the most 
important results of all the experience of the past. Of 
course it is very little that can be thus taught. We are, 
as the poet Tennyson says, " the heirs of all the ages :" r 
but all that the child or the youth can be taught is how 
to get all these great possessions. 

Think what a gain it is simply to be able to read, and 
to read intelligently, and to love to read. As soon as 
one has accomplished this, all the treasures of the 
knowledge and the thought of the past are open to him. 
It is as if the key of a great treasure-house were put 
into his hand and he were told to go and help himself 
to whatever he would have. 

The same is true of whatever else is taught at school. 
Each study well pursued puts a key into the hand of the 
scholar, by which he may unlock one of the doors of 
the world, which would otherwise be closed to him. 

But after all, the mind itself is the best tool ; and 
the best thing that the scholar learns at school is to use 
his mind. 

1 In Locksley Hall. 



66 



Ethics for Young People. 



How many go through the world without seeing any- 
thing accurately ! I have already suggested that it is a 
good plan to study some science, so that one will get 
into the habit of noticing what is before him. 

The hands, too, should be trained to skill. It is a great 
thing to have the mastery of tools. If one has only a 
jack-knife, it is a great thing to be able to make some- 
thing definite with it, and not merely to whittle a stick 
into nothing but whittlings. 

It is still more important to cultivate the mind. Any- 
body who can read can do this. I shall speak of this 
again later, so I will not dwell upon it now. 

One should not be afraid to seek information and 
help from the older persons that one is with. Espe- 
cially in the school, one should consider the teacher as a 
friend, who is ready and eager to help, and whose busi- 
ness it is to help. 

There is another matter that we may often forget, and 
that is the training of the feelings. One who is lazy, 
or quarrelsome, or selfish, ought to try very hard to 
make something different of himself. 

In a word, you should consider what sort of a man 
you would like to be. Think of those you have known, 
or those of whom you have read , or heard, and when you 
make up your mind what sort of a man you would like 
to be, take yourself in hand, and try to make of yourself 
such a person. Treat yourself as if you were somebody 
else that you had charge of, and see what a good training- 
master you can be. 



Self-Respect-. 



67 



CHAPTER XX. 

SELF-RESPECT. 

SELF-RESPECT is the foundation of all true manliness 
and womanliness. When a person has lost this, there is 
little that can be done for him. 

Self-respect is largely the basis of the virtues that we 
have been considering. Ambition, courage, fortitude, 
and other forms of self-control, imply that a person has 
such respect for himself that he likes to fill his place 
well, and to hold his own in the world. It is because 
the coward lacks self-respect that he is willing to flee. 
It is self-respect that inspires fortitude, and prevents 
one from ignominiously collapsing in the presence of 
what is painful or unpleasant. 

Self-respect is a great help in meeting and bearing 
whatever mortifies our vanity, or tempts to envy and 
jealousy. 

Vanity finds its delight solely in the good opinion of 
others ; Self-respect is, to a great degree, independent of 
the opinion of others. 

We should, up to a certain point, seek the good 
opinion of those about us ; and it is natural to enjoy the 
possession of it. Self-respect, however, will not stoop 
to any meanness to gain it, and though the person who 
respects himself may be troubled when this good opin- 
ion is lost without good cause, he will not fret too much 



66 



Ethics for Young People. 



How many go through the world without seeing any- 
thing accurately ! I have already suggested that it is a 
good plan to study some science, so that one will get 
into the habit of noticing what is before him. 

The hands, too, should be trained to skill. It is a great 
thing to have the mastery of tools. If one has only a 
jack-knife, it is a great thing to be able to make some- 
thing definite with it, and not merely to whittle a stick 
into nothing but whittlings. 

It is still more important to cultivate the mind. Any- 
body who can read can do this. I shall speak of this 
again later, so I will not dwell upon it now. 

One should not be afraid to seek information and 
help from the older persons that one is with. Espe- 
cially in the school, one should consider the teacher as a 
friend, who is ready and eager to help, and whose busi- 
ness it is to help. 

There is another matter that we may often forget, and 
that is the training of the feelings. One who is lazy, 
or quarrelsome, or selfish, ought to try very hard to 
make something different of himself. 

In a word, you should consider what sort of a man 
you would like to be. Think of those you have known, 
or those of whom you have read , or heard, and when you 
make up your mind what sort of a man you would like 
to be, take yourself in hand, and try to make of yourself 
such a person. Treat yourself as if you were somebody 
else that you had charge of, and see what a good training- 
master you can be. 



Self-Respect-, 



67 



CHAPTER XX. 

SELF-RESPECT. 

SELF-RESPECT is the foundation of all true manliness 
and womanliness. When a person has lost this, there is 
little that can be done for him. 

Self-respect is largely the basis of the virtues that we 
have been considering. Ambition, courage, fortitude, 
and other forms of self-control, imply that a person has 
such respect for himself that he likes to fill his place 
well, and to hold his own in the world. It is because 
the coward lacks self-respect that he is willing to flee. 
It is self-respect that inspires fortitude, and prevents 
one from ignominiously collapsing in the presence of 
what is painful or unpleasant. 

Self-respect is a great help in meeting and bearing 
whatever mortifies our vanity, or tempts to envy and 
jealousy. 

Vanity finds its delight solely in the good opinion of 
others ; Self-respect is, to a great degree, independent of 
the opinion of others. 

We should, up to a certain point, seek the good 
opinion of those about us ; and it is natural to enjoy the 
possession of it. Self-respect, however, will not stoop 
to any meanness to gain it, and though the person who 
respects himself may be troubled when this good opin- 
ion is lost without good cause, he will not fret too much 



68 



Ethics* for Young People, 



about it. There is something that is to him more im- 
portant than the good-will of others ; that is his respect 
for himself. 

It is well to remember that there is no unfailing 
recipe against trouble in the world. The good person is 
not always happy. Even religion does not undertake to 
make men perfectly happy in the world. It helps them 
to bear trouble, and to get some higher good out of it. 
Such help implies that there is still trouble to be borne. 

Thus the self-respecting person may be pained by 
dislike and neglect; but he will not feel them as a 
person does whose only support is in the good opinion 
of other people. 

Self-respect is a great help against envy and jealousy. 
How much there is to provoke to jealousy, even among 
young people at school. One scholar stands higher in 
the class ; another has finer clothes ; another is more 
popular among the other scholars. 

An envious or jealous person will find in all this the 
source of great unhappiness. He will perhaps hate his 
rival who is preferred, and hate the teacher or the 
companions who give the preference. He will perhaps 
become discouraged or ill-tempered. 

Instead of trying to tell you how a self-respecting 
boy or girl would meet all this, I will tell you how a 
self-respecting boy did meet it. 

One of the most brilliant writers of France has pub- 
lished a book, which is, he tells us, in its first part, the 
story of his own life. 1 The hero of the story, in whom 



1 " Le petit Chose," by Alphonse Daudet. 



Self-Respect. 



6 9 



the author represents himself, is a poor boy, who 
lived in the city of Lyons, in France. He obtained 
an opportunity to attend, without expense, a school 
made up mostly of boys from rich families. He went 
wearing a blouse, such as is often worn by the poorer 
men and boys in France. When he entered the school- 
room, his first glance showed that his was the only blouse 
there. He saw the boys tittering, and from every side 
he heard whispered, " He has come in a blouse ! " As 
days went on, even the master was mean enough to take 
part against him because he was poor. The master 
never called him by his name. When he spoke to him 
it was, " Come here, What's-your-name," or, " What 
are you about, What's-your-name?" Another boy 
might, as I have said, have become discouraged, 
envious, jealous, and very unhappy. But see what this 
boy, who respected himself, did. He said to himself, 
" If I am to take any position in this school I must 
work twice as hard as the other boys!' This he did. 
Later, when he was a great man, we may imagine with 
what pleasure and pride he placed, as the title of the 
book which was the story of his life, the words which 
the master had so often addressed to him in contempt. 
This title we may translate freely into " Little What's- 
his-name." 

A person who respects himself will not stoop to what 
is mean or dishonorable. If his sense of duty is not 
strong enough to preserve him from such things, his 
self-respect will keep him from them. He will be 
ashamed to do a dishonorable thing. 



7o 



Ethics for Young People, 



We can now compare, better than we could have 
done before, self-respect with pride. 

Self-respect is a kind of pride. It is the good pride. 
The bad pride is that which compares one's self with 
others, and looks down upon them. 

Pride differs from vanity, in that the proud man has 
such contempt of others that he does not care very 
much what they think of him. 

When I was a very small boy, a lady was talking with 
me about " easily besetting sins." She said that her 
besetting sin was pride. I looked at her in innocent 
wonder and exclaimed, " Why, what have you to be 
proud of ? " I saw at once by her confusion that I 
had made a very impudent and unlucky speech. We 
cannot ask this question of others ; but if anyone who 
is disposed to be proud should ask himself the question, 
" What have you to be proud of? " and answer it truly, 
it might do him good. 

Self-respect is a pride that makes no comparison with 
others. The man who respects himself is simply 
ashamed to do anything that would be unworthy of 
him. 

He respects himself as he would have others respect 
him. One who does not respect himself cannot expect 
to be respected by others. 




Self-Respect. 



CHAPTER XXI. 

SELF-RESPECT {continued). 

RESPECT for one's self is shown in many ways besides 
those that have been mentioned. It is seen, for instance, 
in neatness or cleanliness. 

It is pleasant to see a young woman, however poor 
she may be, never forgetting to keep herself clean and 
neat. Even a little personal adornment, however simple, 
shows that, in spite of difficult circumstances, she has 
not lost her self-respect. 

It is unpleasant to see a dirty child, although it is not 
the child's fault. You can see, however, from the dis- 
gust that you have in seeing a dirty child, how disgust- 
ing a filthy person always is. 

Even most animals like to keep clean.. We are some- 
times disgusted with the filth in which the hog lives; 
but that is not its fault, but its owner's. Even a hog 
would keep clean if it could. I knew of one that had 
a sleeping-room in the barn, from which an opening 
led into a little yard outside. This yard was like other 
pig-sties; but the sleeping-room was kept perfectly 
neat. The straw which was given it for a bed, it cut up 
with its teeth so that it was fine and soft. All this it 
kept swept, I do not know how, neatly in a corner, 
where it could lie with its nose at the opening so as to 
get the freshest air possible. When I see pigs living 



72 



Ethics for Young People, 



in filth, I think of this one and pity them ; for I know 
that they would be neat if they could. From this it 
appears that a person who does not like to keep clean is 
worse even than a pig. 

While the hog, from the way in which men make 
him live, stands, in spite of himself, as an illustration of 
the disgusting nature of filthiness, the cat may serve 
as an example of personal cleanliness. How the cat 
likes to wash herself with her tongue ! A poor way, we 
should think; but it is her only way, of keeping clean. 

A cat was not well and needed medicine. She re- 
fused to take it, just as some children do. She had, 
however, a better excuse than they, for no one could 
tell her that it was for her good. She did not like it, 
and saw no reason why she should take it. A bright girl, 
fresh from Ireland, exclaimed, " Give me some grease 
and I will make her take it ! " She mixed the medicine 
with the grease, and smouched it over the cat's fur. 
The cat disliked the taste, but she disliked more to have 
her fur soiled, so she licked it all off, and was cured in 
spite of herself. 

Neatness and cleanliness, by showing the self-respect of 
the person who is neat and clean, go far to win for 
him the respect of others. When a young man or 
woman seeks a position of any kind, there is hardly any- 
thing that could harm the chance of success more than 
an untidy and uncleanly appearance. 

A self-respecting person should be ashamed to live in 
an uncleanly or untidy house. 

Cleanliness here has also its practical side. Typhoid 



Self-Respect. 



73 



fever, and other terrible diseases, are caused, as we now 
know, by little living things, far too small to be seen 
except with the help of the microscope, that get into the 
body and work these evils. These little beings are bred 
to a large extent in filth. We see this illustrated on a 
large scale by the fact that when a pestilence visits a 
community, it is the lack of cleanliness in certain local- 
ities that does the most to invite it, and to stimulate its 
ravages. 

Much worse than outward filth is inward impurity. 
No person with any self-respect would stoop to this. 
Impure thoughts are far more disgusting than unclean 
face and hands. 

How would a person who encourages impure 
thoughts feel if his mind were suddenly thrown open to 
the world, so that all could see them? One should 
never do or think what he would be ashamed to have 
those about him know. 

Indeed, the exposure that was suggested in the last 
paragraph takes place up to a certain degree. One 
who is given to this kind of thought tends to show the 
effect of it, at last, in his face. He thinks that nobody 
suspects ; but those who have insight and delicate feeling 
see what the condition of his mind is, and have a loath- 
ing such as few other things can cause. 

There are many other things which a feeling of self- 
respect leads one to avoid. Indeed it is the enemy of 
all the vices and the encourager of all the virtues, as it 
is the heart and soul of manliness. 



74 



Ethics for Young People, 



CHAPTER XXII. 

SELF-CONTROL. 

One of the most important lessons which one has to 
learn is that of self-control. 

The person who is without self-control does at every 
moment just what he feels like doing. He will speak 
the words that come into his mind, no matter how cruel 
or unkind they may be. He will eat what he feels like 
eating, and drink what he feels like drinking, no matter 
how harmful the thing is. 

He is like anything else that is untrained ; like a 
troublesome child; or a dog that has never learned to 
mind. Only in this case it is himself that the person 
has never taught to obey. 

It is w r orth while, sometimes, to keep from doing 
something that is not harmful, but very tempting, simply 
to see that one has this mastery of one's self : just as we 
forbid a dog that we are training to do this or that ; not 
that there is any harm in the thing, but so that he may 
learn to mind our word. 

I have seen a dog sit up with a piece of meat on his 
nose, and make no motion to -eat it until the word of 
command was given. Such a dog is in fine training. We 
ought to have the same mastery over ourselves that the 
owner has over his dog. One who has not this mastery 
is at the mercy of anything. He is like one who is 



Self- Control, 



75 



driving a horse that is not well broken. At the critical 
moment the horse may start, and dart to one side, or 
run ; and he who seems to be the driver, because he 
holds the reins, may be dashed to the ground. 

Long ages ago, in both Greece and India, philoso- 
phers compared the senses to horses well or ill-trained; 
and the comparison may be helpful to us now. 

The habit of eating everything that comes in one's 
way if it tempts the taste, and of eating too much, is 
called gluttony. This often does much to destroy the 
health ; as well as, by the habit of greediness, to prepare 
one for all kinds of loathsome vices when one is older. 

Still more dangerous is the habit of drinking whatever 
tempts the taste. This, when what is so drunk is in- 
toxicating liquor, is called intemperance. 

Intemperance is one of the most contemptible and 
loathsome habits into which one may fall. It is also one 
of the most dangerous. It springs from the lack of 
self-control, and it destroys what little self-control may 
still exist. 

A person who " drinks " gives up all self-command. 
He is like a man who, in the midst of a perilous region, 
throws the reins over his horse's back and lets him take 
what course he will. The best tempered man, when he 
has drunk too much, may become quarrelsome ; the 
kindest hearted one may become brutal and cruel ; the 
most sensible one may become a fool ; and all become 
alike ridiculous. 

One great peril about this matter of drink is that one 
who indulges in it may reach a point where he has no 



7 6 



Ethics for Young People. 



mastery of himself . He may think that he will take a 
glass now and then and be none the worse. He does it 
because a friend offers it, or because he thinks he must 
treat a friend, or because others do, or because he is be- 
ginning to like it ; and, all at once, before he has dreamed 
that it was possible, the drunkard's thirst may be kindled, 
before which he feels himself powerless. 

I suppose that there is nothing more terrible than the 
drunkard's thirst. It is stronger than his love for his 
parents or his wife or his children, stronger than his love 
of respectability, stronger than his dread of poverty or 
ridicule. It is a burning thirst, terrible in its torment and 
never to be satisfied in its demands. 

In some, this thirst is kindled much more easily than 
in others, but there are none who are wholly free from 
the peril of it, and no one can tell in advance how soon 
his turn may come. He may laugh at another who has 
fallen, but at the next moment he may find himself at the 
mercy of this raging demon. 

Far above the falls of Niagara, one may row down 
the river and turn back when he will. But as he goes 
down further, there comes a point beyond which he can- 
not turn back. The trouble is that he can never know 
when he is reaching that point. He thinks that he is 
safe and will turn back : but the stream has him in its 
power, and hurries him on, down towards the terrible 
plunge of the cataract. So it is when one begins to 
drink intoxicating liquor. He cannot tell in advance 
when the point is reached beyond which he is helpless. 

I do not say that it is ever too late for the drunkard 



Self- Control. 



77 



to reform but, if he does, it may be at the cost of a 
struggle more terrible than we can conceive, and in 
which few have the strength and the resolution to win. 

For boys and young men, at least, who are exposed 
to temptation, and all boys and young men are liable to 
be so exposed, the only safe way is to taste nothing that 
will intoxicate. In this way one is safe. But if one 
takes such drink, however rarely at first, he may find 
himself drawn into the deadly current. 

One may laugh at this peril, but it is like laughing at 
the danger from some contagious disease. One may 
say in his pride of health, "I am safe," and the next 
moment the disease may have taken possession of his 
body. 



78 



Ethics for Young People, 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

SELF-RELIANCE. 

It is important to learn early to rely upon yourself; 
for little has been done in the world by those who are 
always looking out for some one to help them. 

We must be on our guard not to confound self-reli- 
ance with self-conceit, yet the difference between the two 
cannot easily be defined in words. 

The difference is something like that between bravery 
and foolhardiness, which was spoken of in an earlier 
chapter. 1 

The self-conceited person takes it for granted that he 
is superior to others. The self-conceited girl thinks 
that she is handsomer, more graceful, or more talented, 
than other girls, that her work is nicer, or that her com- 
position shows more genius. Whatever is to be done, 
she thinks that she can do it better than another, and 
that her way is always the best. The self-conceited boy 
looks upon himself and his exploits in the same way c 
It is hard to correct self-conceit, because all that such 
self-satisfied persons do seems to them so nearly perfect 
that they are liable to grow more and more conceited. 

It is one advantage of going to school that girls and 
boys are apt to have the conceit more or less taken out 
of them, because they are often thrown among others 

1 See chapter XII. 



Self-Reliance. 



79 



who are superior to them, and because their companions 
have little patience with such pretence. 

Self-reliance is very different from self-conceit. The 
self-reliant person is often very modest. He does not say 
about anything that is to be done, " I am so strong and 
wise that I can do it." He says, " I will try, and if pa- 
tience and hard work w T ill do it, it shall be done." 

One way in which a person may become self-reliant, 
is never to seek or accept help till he has fairly tried 
what can be done without it. 

Some scholars, if they come to a problem that seems 
hard, run at once to the teacher, or an older friend, 
or perhaps even to another scholar, who is brighter or 
more self-reliant than themselves, in order to be told 
how to do it. Always try it yourself. Even if it is noth- 
ing more important than a conundrum, do not wish 
somebody to tell you the answer till you have fairly 
tried to conquer it. 

It is a pleasant feeling that comes from having done 
a difficult thing one's self, a feeling that those never 
have who are helped out of every hard place. 

It is like the feeling that one has after having climbed 
a steep mountain. There is a healthy pride in having 
conquered the difficulty of the ascent. There is also 
the comfortable feeling that comes when the muscles 
have been used without being unduly strained. There 
is a similar pleasant sensation when the mind has been 
exerted successfully, in learning, for instance, a difficult 
task, or solving a hard problem. 

One who has overcome one difficulty is ready to 



So Ethics for Young People. 

meet the next with confidence that it, too, will yield to 
his attempt. 

See how much such a person has gained. In later 
life, while others are hesitating what to do, or whether 
to do anything, he goes forward and accomplishes what 
he undertakes. 

It is often better to do a thing by a way that is not 
the very best than not to do it at all. 

Self-reliance is as important in thought as it is in 
action. 

Some people find it hard to make up their minds. 
They run to one and another to get advice. Perhaps 
it is in regard to nothing more important than the color 
of a dress. Perhaps the bits of advice which they re- 
ceive conflict with one another; then such people are 
worse off than they were before. 

No person knows better the real value of advice than 
he who is self-reliant. He has measured his own pow- 
ers so often that he knows where he needs help. 

When advice comes from those who have wisdom 
and experience, it is to be taken thankfully. 

So far as people in general are concerned, it is often 
hard for them to put themselves into your place suffi- 
ciently to give the advice that you really need. The 
very fact of having to do a thing often suggests the 
best way of doing it. Your own thought in regard to 
anything that you have to do, is thus often better than 
that of the companion whose advice you seek. 

It is pleasant, and sometimes helpful, to talk over our 
plans with a friend ; but we must remember that it is 
we ourselves who must make the decision. 



Self- Reliance. 



81 



Did you ever think why it is that so many of the 
great men of our country are found among those who 
began life in hardship and poverty? Many of them 
grew up in what was, when they were young, the west- 
ern frontier, where they had to work hard ; where they 
had no schools, and few comforts and conveniences. They 
have come from circumstances that seemed wholly dis- 
couraging, and have become presidents, judges, generals, 
or millionaires. 

You would find it interesting to put down the names 
of those that have reached such success from such hard 
beginnings, and keep a list of them. If you are careful 
to learn about such persons, and to write down their 
names, you will be astonished to see how long your list 
will become. Such a list you could keep as a special 
division in the book of heroes of which I have spoken 
in another place. 1 

Many who were thus situated in their youth did not 
reach such prominent positions. They became often, 
however, enterprising and useful citizens. They will 
not be added to your list, but they lived no less success- 
ful, and perhaps happier, lives than those whose names 
have become familiar to the world. One reason why so 
many that had such an unpromising beginning have won 
great success is, that because they had so few helps they 
were forced to help themselves. They thus became 
self-reliant. When they went out into the world they 
went straight ahead. Without waiting for any one to 



1 See page 51. 



82 



Ethics for Young People. 



make a place for them, they made a place for them- 
selves. Without waiting for any one to do for them, 
they did for themselves. Without waiting for people to 
advise them, they trusted themselves. They were 
prompt, energetic and sensible. Thus people trusted 
them and honored them. 

Though you have the helps that such men were 
forced to do without, yet you can cultivate the habit 
of self-reliance. You can solve your own problems, do 
your own tasks, and meet your own difficulties ; and 
thus you, too, can be preparing to do your own part in 
the world. 

When I was a young man, I was with a friend on the 
shore of a lake in the Maine woods. We wanted to 
fish ; we found a boy, perhaps ten years old, who got a 
boat for us, showed us where the best place to fish was, 
pulled with us out on the lake, and made himself very 
serviceable. When we had finished, we offered him 
some money for the boat and his help. He refused to 
take it. He straightened himself up and said, " I 
wanted to fish myself." 

I have often thought of that manly boy, self-reliant 
and contented with himself. He did not want favors 
that he did not need from strangers whom he did not 
know. 

All this reminds me of a fable which I read when I was 
a boy, and which I have remembered ever since : — 
Some larks had a nest in a field of grain. One evening 
the old larks coming home found the young ones in 
great terror. " We must leave our nest at once," they 



Self-Reliance. 



83 



cried. Then they related how they had heard the 
farmer say that he must get his neighbors to come the 
next day to help him reap his field. " Oh ! " cried 
the old birds, " If that is all, we may rest quietly in our 
nest." The next evening the young birds were found 
again in a state of terror. The farmer, it seems, 
was angry because his neighbors had not come, and 
had said that he should get his relatives to come the 
next day and help him. The old birds took the news 
easily, and said there was nothing to fear yet. The 
next evening the young birds were very cheerful. 
" Have you heard nothing to-day? " asked the old ones. 
" Nothing important," answered the young. " It is 
only that the farmer was again angry because his rela- 
tives also had failed him, and he said to his sons, ' Since 
neither our neighbors nor our relations will help us, we 
must take hold to-morrow and do it ourselves/ " The 
old birds were excited this time. They said, "We 
must leave our nest to-night. When a man decides to 
to do a thing for himself, and to do it at once, you 
may be pretty sure that it will be done." 



8 4 



Ethics for Young People 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

RELATIONS TO OTHERS. 

THUS far we have considered chiefly what may be 
called the duties that one owes to one's self. Nearly 
all that has been said would be true if one lived inde- 
pendently of all others, and had to seek only a peaceful 
and happy life. 

But we do not live thus independently. Every one 
of us is united with others. He is a member of a 
family. He belongs to the town, to the state, to the 
nation, to the whole world of persons. He is connected 
with the past and the future as well as the present. 

It has been sometimes thought that society was 
formed by the free choice of men who had before been 
independent, living each for himself, but who gave up 
a part of their liberty for the sake of the protection and 
aid that come from living with others. We now know 
that from the earliest times men have lived in social re- 
lations with one another. 

Indeed, man would be nothing if there were taken 
from him what he has received, and what he is always 
receiving, from the community in which he lives. 

Did you ever lose yourself in the city or in the 
woods? If you ever did, you can understand how 
dependent we all are upon those with whom we live. 

It is a very strange and painful feeling that one 
has when he is lost in a city ; especially if one is w T ith- 



Relations to Others. 



8 5 



out money. One who is thus lost sees only strange 
streets, strange buildings, and strange people. If he 
seeks food or shelter, he is looked at coldly. He has 
stepped out of his place in the world, and is helpless 
and homeless, till he has found his place again, or has 
made a new one for himself. 

One is still more helpless who is lost in the woods. 
The trees may wave, the sun shine, the flowers bloom, 
the birds sing ; all may be beautiful : but one who is 
lost has no part in it all. He has no food but the 
berries, no shelter but the trees, no friend to whom he 
may speak. 

This illustration shows how little any one of us 
amounts to when he is left wholly to himself; and how 
we really live in the social life around us. 

You have all read, I hope, the story of Robinson 
Crusoe. You may think that there was a man who 
lived by himself, and independent of the world. 

But think, how sad he was, and how he longed to be 
with human beings once again. 

Think, also, how much he took w r ith him that other 
people had made, without which he would have per- 
ished. He had food with which to begin his life on the 
island; he had tools with which to provide for his 
needs. All these things and other conveniences were 
the product of the civilization that he had left. 

Notice, further, that in making a place to live, in mak- 
ing a boat to sail in, and in whatever else he did, he was 
acting according to the experience that he had had, and 
the observation that he had made before he left home. 



86 



Ethics for Young People. 



When he went beyond all that his experience had 
given him, he used the results of the training that he 
had had, and the habits of mind that he had inherited 
from the past. 

He was thus simply a member of European society, a 
representative of European civilization, and a product 
of European history, who happened to be separated 
from the social world of which he was a part. He lived 
on the island, illustrating, as far as circumstances 
allowed, the results of European history and European 
civilization. 

If he had belonged to a savage community, though 
he might in some things have done just what he really 
did do, yet he would, on the whole, have thought, felt, 
and acted like a savage instead of thinking, feeling, and 
acting as a European. 

This illustration shows how impossible you would 
find it to live as if you were alone in the world. As I 
said before, if you could give up all that you have re- 
ceived from the past and from the social world of the 
present, there would be actually nothing left of you. 

If a leaf on a tree could think, it would be just as 
easy for it to try to be something without regard to the 
other leaves and to the tree on which it grows, as for a 
man to try to be anything by and for himself, without 
regard to the social order of which he is a part and a 
product. 

The leaf may fall from the tree and wither; but it is a 
leaf just the same : only it is a shrunken and withered leaf. 
So a man may try to live as if the rest of the world had 



Relations to Others. 



87 



no interest for him ; but he cannot help being a part of 
this world : only, in trying to live without regard to it, 
he may lose something of the fullness and strength of 
his life, just as the fallen leaf loses so much of its 
beauty. 

X 



88 



Ethics for Young People. 



CHAPTER XXV. 

SELFISHNESS. 

If thus no one lives merely for himself, but is a part 
of the community, the family, the town, the state, and 
the world to which he belongs, it is clear that one's 
first business in life is to fill his place properly and 
well. 

One who would live merely for himself, without regard 
for others, is like a musician in a band or orchestra who 
seeks to make as much noise as he can, and thus at- 
tract attention to himself, instead of simply filling his 
place in the great whole. Such a one would attract at- 
tention to himself, but he would simply make himself 
disagreeable and ridiculous. 

I do not mean that one is not to seek his own good 
or his own happiness. It would be a very dull and 
spiritless world if no one cared for his own interest or 
pleasure. 

Indeed, if one does not take care of himself under 
ordinary circumstances, he cannot fill his place in the 
great body to which he belongs. The soldier must 
keep well and strong and in good spirits, or he cannot 
be what he should, in the march or the battle. Many a 
soldier who has been kept back by sickness or suffering 
from taking part in some difficult and perilous move- 
ment in which the army corps to which he belonged 



Selfishness. 



8 9 



was taking part, has regretted his failure to be in his 
place and to do his share of the work, more than all the 
pain that he is suffering. 

The world in which we live is like a great army, in 
which each has a place. The family, the school, all the 
relations in which one stands, are like the divisions of an 
army, at least in so far that each supplies a place in 
which one must stand, and gives also duties which be- 
long to this place. 

While, then, one seeks his own interest and pleasure, 
he is not to seek these as if other people did not have 
their own interests and pleasures, which are worth as 
much to them as his are to him. 

The living as if one were alone in the world, or rather 
as if other people were in the world simply to serve us, 
is called selfishness. Selfishness consists in the disregard 
of others, and in seeking to fulfil one's own desires as if 
other people had neither desires nor rights. 

Selfishness, we might almost say, is the one bad thing 
in the world, for all crimes and all misdeeds, great and 
small, spring from it. 

It is selfishness that robs and cheats. The selfish 
man wants money, He does not care that others have 
also their wants and their rights. They have money 
and he wants it ; so he takes it in any way that he can. 

It is selfishness that is the source of intemperance and 
all the degradation and crime to which it leads. To see 
the drunkard, poor and ragged, despised and ridiculed, 
you would hardly think that he went into it for the sake 
of having a good time. If he went into it for that, it 



90 



Ethics for Young People. 



does not seem to have been a success. But it is because 
at the first he thought merely of his own immediate 
pleasure, and forgot the happiness of father and mother, 
or of wife and children, that he sank to this low condi- 
tion. 

It is selfishness that leads to the neglect of the poor 
and the helpless, that makes men so stingy and mean 
that they are often unwilling to help others even when 
it can be done at little cost or trouble to themselves. 

It is selfishness that speaks the cruel words or makes 
the jest that gives another pain. 

It is selfishness that takes pleasure in tormenting an- 
other ; that takes pleasure in tormenting the dumb ani- 
mals. 

In a word, selfishness seeks to get the most good pos- 
sible out of the world, and to do the least that is possi- 
ble for others. 

It is easy from this to see what a mean thing it is to 
be selfish. Indeed, what we call meanness is selfishness 
on a small scale. But selfishness on a large scale is just 
as contemptible and just as mean as the other. You 
have a contempt for the child that gets off by itself, so 
that it can eat its cake or candy without having to share 
it with its friends. You have a greater contempt for 
the child that gets possession of its playmate's share of 
the good things that children love so much. But self- 
ishness of older people, in regard to things considered 
much more important and dignified, is just as mean and 
contemptible and childish as this. The selfishness of 
the great conqueror who gratifies his ambition at the 



Selfishness. 



91 



cost of the lives or happiness of millions ; or that of the 
demagogue who misleads the people, arousing their 
discontent and passion, that his schemes of ambition 
may be aided, is just as mean as that of the child that 
seizes its playmate's cake or apple. 



92 



Ethics for Young People. 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

OBEDIENCE. 

We have seen that every man is a member of the 
body that we call, in general, " Society." First he be- 
longs to the family, and then through this to larger 
organizations. Selfishness we have found to be the at- 
tempt of a person to live as if he existed merely on his 
own account and as if other people existed for him. 

There are several ways in which the relation to this 
common life makes itself felt. Some of these we will 
now consider. 

One of the most outward, and yet one of the most 
important of these, is obedience. 

It is obedience by which the man takes the place that 
belongs to him by yielding to the claims which society 
makes upon him. 

These claims differ according to the age or the posi- 
tion of the person upon whom they are made. So far 
as one neglects them and lives merely on his own ac- 
count, he loses, as we have seen, his best life. 

The boy sometimes feels that it is childish to obey the 
rules of the home or the school. He feels that to set 
them at defiance is manly. On the contrary, it is 
obedience that is manly and disobedience that is childish. 

The baby knows no rules. It seeks only what seems 
pleasant to itself. It is kept only by force from doing 



Obedience. 



93 



what would be harmful to itself, or to the persons and 
things about it. 

Soon, however, in the case of a child properly trained, 
the rules begin, and it never is free of them again so 
long as it lives. 

The first lesson that the child has to learn is the 
general one of obedience. It must learn to obey, for this 
lies behind and beneath all other lessons. 

In the matter of obedience the training of a child is 
like the training of a dog or a horse. When the animal 
has learned what it is to mind it can learn a great many 
other things. 

This does not mean that the child must have hard and 
harsh rules. The best obedience is learned quietly and 
pleasantly, and almost without the sense of constraint. 
Even a dog is best trained in this way, and then it 
thoroughly enjoys performing its tricks. 

You may have been surprised at being told that it is 
manly to obey, and that men and women have to do 
this. At school the scholar has to mind the teacher, 
and the teacher seems only to command. But the 
teacher has to obey as truly as the scholar. What would 
you think if, when you went to school, you should find 
that the teacher had gone off for a day's pleasuring in 
the woods? You might like it, but what would your par- 
ents or the committee think? What would they think 
if the teacher did not hear your lessons, and did not see 
that you learned them ? Thus you see that the teacher 
has to obey as well as the scholar. 

What would you think of a shop-keeper who should 
shut up his shop every now and then, when he wanted 



94 



Ethics for Young People, 



a little fun ? or of a doctor who, when he was sent for, 
should send back word that he was reading a novel and 
that he did not wish to leave off ? In all such cases we 
should not say, " How manly these people are to do 
what they feel like doing, without regard to the demands 
that are made upon them. " We should say, " How 
childish they are ! " Thus you see that to obey is man- 
ly; to refuse to obey is childish. 

The man has to obey more strict laws than the boy 
or the girl knows anything about. On a ship, the sailors 
think what an easy time the captain has. He seems to 
have nothing to do but to give orders. But the sailors, 
except when the weather is especially bad, have their 
hours of work and their hours of freedom ; their watch 
above and their watch below. But the captain is never 
quite free. He not only has to obey the orders of the 
owners of the ship, but, in doing this, he has to have 
thought for everything, for the wind and the currents, 
for the barometer and the clouds. He is subject thus 
not merely to the direct orders of the ship's owners, but 
to every change of wind, and to all the facts about 
him, to what we may call the law of tilings. 

This law of tilings is more pressing and continuous 
than any other. It is to this that men and women are 
especially subject. 

Above all there is the law of duty, the obligation to 
do right, from which one can never escape. 

Obedience is in life what subjection to law is in the 
natural world. It is obedience that keeps the planets in 
their places, and brings seed-time and harvest each in 



Obedience. 



95 



its season ; just as it is obedience that makes all the dif- 
ference between a civilized society and a horde of savages. 

This is what Wordsworth had in mind when in his 
magnificent "Ode to Duty" he exclaimed: 

« 4 Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong ; 
And the most ancient heavens, through Thee, are fresh and strong. " 

One who has not learned to obey can hardly find a 
pleasant or satisfactory position in a world that both 
physically and socially is held together by obedience. 



9 6 



Ethics for Young- People. 



CHAPTER XXVII. 

LOVE AND SYMPATHY. 

EVERY person, as we have seen, is bound to the social 
order by obligations that require obedience. This bond 
is, however, an outward one. There is an inner bond 
which is even more important, by which each one of us 
is, or should be, united to those about him. This is 
love or sympathy, 

A little while ago we saw that no man can live by and 
for himself, and that we are dependent upon the world 
of men and women, the world of the present and the 
world of the past, for all that we have and are. The 
same thing may be more clearly seen in the fact that 
any person becomes unhappy if long separated from his 
kind. We all need the companionship, the sympathy, 
and the love of others. Hardly any punishment is so 
severe as a long term of solitary imprisonment. In 
Hawthorne's story, "The House of the Seven Gables," 
the character of Clifford Pyncheon shows how a person 
becomes weakened and stupefied by such imprisonment. 
It is indeed well for all sometimes to be alone. Too 
much and too constant intercourse with others may hin- 
der our best life. But nothing is more painful and more 
dangerous to the best life than prolonged separation 
from other people. 

I have known a case in which an ox, whose yoke-fel- 



Love and Sympathy. 



97 



low had died, died itself shortly after from mere loneli- 
ness. Men and women are hardly less dependent upon 
companionship. 

The world is so made that it probably never happens 
that a person lives who has not, or has never had, any 
one to love him. There is the love of parents, of 
brothers and sisters, of relatives and companions. 

On the other hand, it is as rare to find a person who 
does not love some other person, or at least some ani- 
mal ; though some persons are so bound up in them- 
selves that this love is very weak. 

Love and sympathy may generally be regarded as 
stronger or weaker examples of the same thing, or as 
different aspects of the same thing. There may, how- 
ever, be sympathy where there is no love, and love 
where there is little sympathy. 

There may be sympathy without love, for you may 
sympathize with the grief of a person who is a stranger, 
and even with that of one whom you dislike. 

It seems less natural that there can be love without 
sympathy. A person may, however, be selfish enough 
to cause pain to another whom he loves, with no thought 
of what he is doing. A young man may, by disobe- 
dience or evil habits, cause great grief to his parents 
whom he really loves. 

Sympathy needs a certain thoughtfulness as its root. 
One must think of others and put himself in their place, 
and consider what will please and what will wound 
them. Strange as it may seem, nothing can be more 
cruel than love that is thoughtless in regard to its object. 



9 8 



Ethics for Young People, 



Every one knows that other people have feelings like 
his own. But though we all know this, it takes some 
people a long while to really feel that it is so, to realize 
that others have feelings that can be pained. 

Every one should have such a sense of this fact that 
he will shrink, by a kind of instinct, from giving another 
unnecessary pain, just as he shrinks from giving him- 
self unnecessary pain. 

We should thus extend our own personalities, so that 
we shall feel with and for others somewhat as if they 
were a part of ourselves. 

This interest in others, whether it be love which we 
can feel only for a few, or sympathy which we should 
feel more or less for all, may take the hardness out of 
the duty and obedience which were spoken of in the last 
chapter. 

The doctor going to see his patient may go, not be- 
cause it is his duty, or merely to gain this special fee, 
but because he is interested to help him. The boy may 
do what his parents wish because he loves to please 
them. 

If we cannot live without the companionship of others, 
and if we are all surrounded by affection and interest 
that give the charm to our lives, how careful should we 
be to meet such love and sympathy with a correspond- 
ing love, and a thoughtful sympathy, so that we shall 
not receive everything, and give nothing in return. 



Usefulness. 



99 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 

USEFULNESS. 

We have seen that every one is, or should be, bound 
to the world of men and women, outwardly by obedience^ 
and inwardly by love and sympathy. In these ways each 
becomes a member of the great organization that we 
call society. 

Growing out of these is another form of relation 
as important as these ; namely, that of usefulness. 

Every one has a place in the world, and if he fills 
this place properly, he is of service to others and to the 
great body of which he is a member. 

Notice the workmen when some large house is being 
built, and see how, while they are busied in many dif- 
ferent ways, each one is helping on the common work. 
The hod-carrier carries up the bricks and mortar ; the 
mason places the bricks carefully and evenly where they 
belong; the carpenter, the glazier, the painter, the 
slater, and all the rest, do some one kind of work, and 
others another ; and all, under the direction of the con- 
tractor, carry out the plan of the architect, till what was 
at first merely a thought in the mind of the architect 
becomes a finished building, fitted for use, and perhaps 
an object of beauty. From the architect to the hod- 
carrier, no one of the workmen could be spared. 

We see the growth and the beauty of a tree. Here 



IOO 



Ethics for Young People, 



also every part is of use. The roots draw up the nour- 
ishment from the soil. The trunk and the limbs give 
strength and form, and furnish channels through which 
the sap runs to every part. The green leaves are the 
lungs through which the tree breathes. The flowers 
and fruit prepare and cherish the seed from which other 
trees spring. The lightest leaf, the gayest flower, the 
most thread-like rootlet that is hidden in the black 
earth, all are of service, and each helps on the common 
life. 

Look now at the world of men and women, and see 
how every calling is an opportunity for some form of 
usefulness by which society is the gainer. The doctor, 
the lawyer, the minister, the shoemaker, the gardener, 
the shopkeeper, the dressmaker, and all other workers, 
are each filling a place in the great social body. If 
these places were not filled, the life of the world would 
be lacking in something. 

Men enter these callings for the most part, perhaps, 
to get a living. It is, however, an important fact that to 
get a living, one needs, for the most part, to perform 
some service ; just as the flowers earn their right to 
their place in the plant and to the sap that comes to 
them, by preparing and protecting the germs that are 
to become seeds. 

The man that considers merely how much money he 
can make by his labor, fills his place in the world very 
poorly. Think how grand and noble a thing all labor 
would come to be, if each one would perform it with the 
thought that by it he is doing his part for the well-being 



Usefulness, 



IOI 



of the world. Every one should make his life larger 
by the thought of the usefulness and the importance of 
what he is doing, and the thought that by it he is a living 
member of the great body. 

We sometimes fancy that we would like to live merely 
to amuse ourselves, with no cares or duties. But when 
we think more carefully, we see that this would be a 
mean sort of life. One would be ashamed to have the 
whole world working for him, and he to be doing noth- 
ing for the world. 

Besides these ways of usefulness that grow out of the 
various callings of life, one who has the love and the 
thoughtful sympathy that were spoken of in the last 
chapter, will find many other kinds of special helpful- 
ness. There are always about us those for whom we 
can do something. People are always doing something 
for us in these little ways, and it would be mean not to 
do the like for them. Even if they were not helpful to 
us, that is no reason why we should- not help them. 
We can pay to them a part of the debt that we owe to 
those who have helped us, but whom we have not 
helped. 

For boys and girls in school or in college, the school 
or the college is their place of business. They are get- 
ting ready to take their part in the work of the world, 
just as the growing twig is getting ready to bear its 
part of the weight of leaves and fruit. 

But while this preparation is going on, there are 
chances enough for helpfulness. These are found at 
home, among their companions, or with those whom 



102 



Ethics for Young People. 



they chance to meet ; and everyone who has the right 
spirit will take both pleasure and pride in being helpful. 
One should be ashamed merely to be taken care of in 
the world without doing anybody any good, even if the 
interest that he has for others would let him. 

As self-command is the fundamental principle of the 
ethics of Stoicism, and as the desire for happiness is that 
of the ethics of Epicureanism, so the principle of love 
and service is fundamental in the ethics of Jesus. 



Truth and Honesty. 



103 



CHAPTER XXIX. 

TRUTH AND HONESTY. 

We have seen that men are bound to Society by obe- 
dience, love, and usefulness. There are certain virtues 
growing out of these principles, and certain vices corre- 
sponding to these, a few of which we will now consider. 

Prominent among these virtues are those of truth and 
honesty. To these are opposed the vices of lying and 
cheating. 

Society is like a building, which stands firm when its 
foundations are strong and all its timbers are sound. 
The man who cannot be trusted is to society what a 
bit of rotten timber is to a house. 

How often we see the effects of dishonesty in the 
building of houses. Every now and then we read of 
some great crash, which has occurred because the con- 
tractor who was putting up a building had been dishon- 
est. He had used poor material, or had put his 
material carelessly together. So the building falls per- 
haps even before it is finished. 

Poor work is bad enough ; but w T hat the man is, is 
even worse and more harmful than what he does. He 
himself is a piece of rotten timber, to which no one can 
trust ; and he is tending to make society itself as unsta- 
ble as the house that he was pretending to build. 

Society exists because men trust one another. On the 



Ethics for Young People. 



whole, men can be trusted, if one uses a reasonable care. 
The dishonest man thus does not belong to a civilized 
society. He belongs to the times of barbarism before 
men had learned the worth and importance of trust- 
worthiness. 

He thus is in the position of a barbarian who is mak- 
ing war upon civilization, just as the hostile Indian 
lurks about some settlement in the wilderness, seeking to 
plunder and destroy. 

What contempt we have for a man who robs another, 
who picks his pocket, or knocks him down in some 
lonely place and strips him of whatever articles of value 
he may have! But the man who cheats, is a thief just 
as truly as the pickpocket and the robber. 

There are kinds of cheating that the law cannot or 
does not touch. The man who practises this kind of 
dishonesty is even worse than if he were doing that 
which the law punishes. He uses the law which was 
meant to protect society as a cover from which he can 
attack society. 

The boy who cheats in his games really spoils the 
games. The game is not for the sake of the victory. 
It is the idea of the victory that gives zest to the game. 
It is the playing according to rule, and the winning, if 
one can win according to the laws of the game, that 
give all the fun there is in it. Thus the boy that cheats 
does for the playground what the man that cheats does 
for society. 

As the boy that cheats in his games puts himself 
outside the community of his playmates, and makes war 



Truth and Honesty. 



upon it, so he, when he grows up to be a man, will 
probably be the one who will, by dishonesty, separate 
himself from society and make war upon it. 

Lying is a form of dishonesty, and a very bad form of 
it. What would become of the w r orld if we could not 
trust to one another's w T ord? 

A lie is told for one of two ends : either to get 
some advantage to which one has no real claim, in 
which case it is merely a form of cheating; or to de- 
fend one's self from the bad consequences of something 
that one has done, in which case it is cowardly. 

It is always mean for a man or boy " to go back," as 
we say, on a friend. It is still worse, if possible, to 
" go back" on one's self. A brave man or boy will 
manfully take the consequences of his act, and if they 
are bad, will resolve to do better another time. 

The worst sort of deceit is that by which one lets an- 
other bear the blame, or in any way suffer, for what one 
has one's self done. Such meanness happens some- 
times, but it is almost too bad to be spoken of. 

It is a great thing to call acts and actors by their 
right names. If we should always do this, I think it 
might save us from some faults. 

If before speaking what is untrue, one should say to 
one's self, " That w 7 ould be a lie, and if I should say it I 
should be a liar" ; or if before doing a dishonest thing 
one should say to one's self, " If I should do this I 
should be a cheat," I think fewer false words would be 
spoken and fewer dishonest acts would be done. 



io6 



Ethics for Young People. 



CHAPTER XXX. 

GOOD TEMPER. 

A MAN with a bad temper, like one who lies and 
cheats, makes war upon his social surroundings : only he 
does in an open and bold way what the other does 
in a sly and underhand way ; and, further, his war is 
with individuals, while one who lies and cheats attacks 
the very foundations of society. 

It is not, however, always wrong to be angry. There 
are occasions when it would be wrong not to be angry. 
In these cases it is, indeed, war ; but it is war in defence 
of society, not against it. We do not call a man who is 
angry only when it is right to be angry, a man of bad 
temper. 

If one sees a strong boy tormenting a small or weak 
one, or abusing some helpless animal, anger is a proper 
as well as a natural feeling. It is so, too, when one 
sees another imposing upon some one more ignorant or 
simple than himself, taking advantage of ignorance and 
simplicity. 

One may sometimes be angry at wrongs done to 
one's self, when one has been treated brutally, or has 
been wickedly deceived. 

Anger is in such cases a natural instinct of defence, 
by which one wards off or punishes injury to others, or 
to one's self. 



Good Temper. 



107 



In spite of this, anger, as it actually exists in the 
world, is more often wrong than right. It is for this 
reason that it is commonly spoken of as a fault. 

It is a fault when one gets angry too easily. There are 
persons who lose their temper at any little thing. They 
are always thinking that others meant to injure them in 
something that they said or did. They are always 
thinking of their rights or their feelings. 

Such anger is a form of selfishness. It comes in part 
from keeping the self prominent in one's thoughts, and 
thinking that whatever is said or done has had some 
reference to one's self. 

This appears from the fact that such persons have very 
often less consideration for others than for themselves. 

We should remember that anger is apt to be a very 
unjust judge. Nothing exaggerates like anger. To 
look at an act through an angry mood, is like looking 
at an object through a magnifying glass. It is often 
more like looking through a glass that distorts as well 
as magnifies. In anger, everything looks out of propor- 
tion. 

One should be thoughtful to distinguish between 
what is meant and what is accidental. Even a dog will 
often show no anger if it thinks that one trod on it by 
accident ; whereas if it thinks the hurt was intentional it 
will be filled with rage. We ought to be at least as 
considerate as a dog. 

Because anger exaggerates, the passion is often too 
strong even where there may have been some real prov- 
ocation. 



io8 



Ethics for Young People, 



" Anger," says an old Latin proverb, " is a short mad- 
ness." The boys say something of the same kind when 
they speak of being " mad," when they mean angry. 

The person carried away with anger has no mastery 
of himself. He does not know what he is saying or 
what he is doing. He is really " beside himself." He 
sees nothing as it is. Such a person is feeling very 
heroic, but he is often appearing very foolish and ridic- 
ulous. 

Anger is often unreasonable. In anger we pronounce 
judgment upon another, perhaps upon our best friend. 
For the moment we see only his faults. We are com- 
plainant as well as judge. As the criminal has no ad- 
vocate, we should pause and plead his cause ourselves, 
and ask, " Is it certain that the accusation is true? Is 
the case quite as bad as it looks? Has this person, 
whom at other times we have loved, no good qualities? 
Is there nothing to be said in his defence? " 

Anger is often too long-lived, even when it may have 
been at*first justifiable. At the first moment of passion, 
perhaps, one can hardly pause to ask the questions that 
were just suggested ; but after a little time one should 
be able to do this, and thus control the wrath. 

If you are angry with a friend, you know, though you 
may not think it at the time, that the anger will not last 
forever. You may calm your rage by looking forward 
to the time when you shall be again at peace with your 
friend. 

One should thus learn to forgive even when one has 
really been injured. We should be able to see that the 



Good Temper, 



act that offended us was far less evil than it seemed at 
first; or that it does not represent the real or the whole 
person who offended us. Or at least we can judge it 
calmly, as if it had been done to another. 

Some persons are by nature more quick-tempered 
than others. By giving way to the fault, we make it 
worse and worse ; while by checking it, in such ways as 
have been named, we may gain the habit of keeping a 
better command over ourselves. 

I need hardly speak of the advantages of having a 
good temper. Not only are one's relations to others the 
pleasanter for this, but one can even guard his own in- 
terests the better. The bad-tempered person is apt to 
harm himself more than he harms others. 



I IO 



Ethics for Young People, 



/ CHAPTER XXXI. 

COURTESY. 

EARLY in this book, we saw that the words " morality" 
and " ethics " mean, in their etymology, simply manners ; 
and we saw how this thought of manners formerly re- 
ferred to the whole life. At present we use the word 
" manners, " simply to express the most outward rela- 
tions of life. We speak of " good manners" or " bad 
manners, " meaning by the words that a person con- 
forms more or less perfectly to what are called the 
" usages of good society. " Thus a man may have good 
morals and bad manners, or he may have good man- 
ners and bad morals, or both his manners and his 
morals may be either good or bad. 

Of course, if we have to choose between them, it is 
much better to have good morals than good manners. 
A man's good manners may sometimes even help 
him to carry out wicked plans. In this case, we dislike 
him all the more for the good manners which he has 
used to help him in his wickedness. 

But one does not have to choose between the two ; 
and good manners, though less important than good 
morals, are yet very desirable. 

Some kinds of bad manners do no harm to any one 
except to the person practising them. They are dis- 
agreeable to see, but their greatest effect is that the bad- 
mannered person shows himself to be a boor. 



Coitrtesy. 



in 



If a man keeps on his hat in another person's house, 
he simply shows himself unacquainted with what are re- 
garded as the proprieties of life. 

Now, it is not desirable to be a " dude " on the one 
side, or a boor on the other : but a little attention to 
these matters will help to make one agreeable to those 
whom one meets. 

Young people sometimes think attention to such 
things is foolish. When I was a small boy, I thought 
it a ridiculous piece of affectation in the schoolmistress, 
who insisted that I should say " catch " instead of 
" ketch. " Now I am grateful for the breaking up of 
any such bits of ill breeding. 

Another kind of good manners is still more import- 
ant. I refer to habits of courtesy towards all with 
whom we have anything to do. 

Courtesy towards another shows a certain respect for 
his personality \ We have seen that we should respect 
ourselves : it is hardly less important to show respect to 
others. 

A habit of courtesy is like a delicate wrapping which 
prevents one personality from rubbing and chafing 
against another ; and it thus prevents much of the friction 
and irritation of life. 

Courtesy is perhaps most of all proper from the 
young towards those who are older than themselves. 
There is too little of this in our days. Boys and girls 
will speak to their elders, perhaps even to their parents, 
with rude familiarity, such as would be hardly proper 
among playmates. 



112 Ethics for Young People. 



When one meets even a stranger in any place where 
the two are brought together, a little greeting does much 
to take" away the sense of strangeness. In Europe, 
when one enters a public conveyance, or seats himself 
at the table of a hotel, or meets another on a country 
road, there is almost always a pleasant greeting, such as 
is too rarely seen in this country. 

The habit of courtesy from boys and men to ladies is 
another mark of good manners which is not to be neg- 
lected. 

Ladies often show bad manners in taking such acts of 
courtesy as if they had a right to them. If a man offers 
a lady a seat, he has a little sense of injury if she seems 
to regard it as her due, and does not even thank him 
for what he has done. This sort of ill manners in 
American women has tended to diminish such courtesy 
towards them. 

One should show courtesy to his companions. Boys, 
even in their play, should be courteous to one another. 
One who is always pushing for the best without regard 
to others shows his ill breeding. A " thank you " and 
a " please " on proper occasions, are not out of place 
even among the closest companions. 

Perhaps in the family, courtesy is more important 
than anywhere else ; because hardly anywhere else are 
people thrown so closely together ; and, thus, nowhere 
do they need more the protection of courtesy by which 
much unpleasant friction and much unhappiness would 
be avoided. 

Courtesy is not something artificial. It is simply an 



Courtesy. 



113 



expression of thoughtfulness for others, and rudeness 
and boorishness, though sometimes they spring from 
ignorance, are more often the expression of selfishness, 
which forgets the feelings and the tastes of others. 



H4 



Ethics for Young People. 



CHAPTER XXXII. 

THE PLAYGROUND. 

It may seem strange to speak of duties in connection 
with play. One great charm of play is the escape from 
the sense of duty. At school one has to be very 
careful as to what he does and what he does not do. 
There are rules at every turn, but on the playground 
one escapes from rules. 

There are rules of a sort, it is true. There are the 
rules of the game. There are also certain kinds of 
mischief that must not be done, and similar general reg- 
ulations ; but on the whole, on the playground one is 
free ; and this makes a good part of the pleasure of the 
sport. 

It is a very pleasant thing to feel one's self free ; to be 
able to do just what one feels like doing. It is a free- 
dom like that which I suppose a horse feels, when he is 
turned out to pasture, and can fling out his heels, or 
roll without any thought of whip or rein. 

I do not wish to disturb the sense of freedom that 
you have at play. Indeed it is because the playground 
is so free a place that I speak of it here. There is, per- 
haps, no time in the world when a person shows himself 
for just what he is, as truly as lie does when he is amus- 
ing himself. Then he has no rules to observe ; he is 
off his guard, and whatever of good or bad there is in 
him is likely to show itself. 



The Playground. 



The playground is a little world by itself. On it may 
be displayed a great many of the virtues and the faults 
of the great world in which men and women live. I am 
sometimes tempted to think that a great deal that goes 
on in this larger world is little better than play of a very 
formal kind. But it is certain that the great world is 
reflected in the little world where boys and girls are at 
their games. 

What an opportunity there is on the playground to 
show the strength or the weakness of one' s command over 
himself. Some young people are always getting angry 
in their play. They make themselves very disagreeable 
to their companions. They may break up the merriest 
party or spoil the best time. 

There are many opportunities to lose one's temper at 
play. It is not pleasant to lose the game ; yet, from 
the nature of the case, some must lose it. 

It is especially unpleasant to lose it by the bad play 
of some one on your own side, and it is very often the 
case that the game is lost in this way. 

It is very easy to think that the other side has not 
played fairly, and to get angry over the suspicion or 
the belief. 

It is very easy to get into a quarrel over the rules of 
the game. 

In some games it is very easy to get hurt and to ac- 
cuse some one of being the cause of it. 

There are, indeed, more ways of losing one's temper 
than I have time or space to name. The boy or the 
girl who is quarrelsome, could not have a better field 
for showing this quality. 



n6 



Ethics for Young People. 



The boy or the girl of good temper and pleasant dis- 
position has the same opportunity to show them. If 
one can meet all the chances of play pleasantly, he 
shows great self-command, and by this experience he is 
fitting himself more and more to take part in the great 
game of life. Even in the hardest tussle one should 
keep his temper. I was once passing a group of boys 
at play, and heard one of them exclaim, " Any boy 
that can't fight without getting mad, had better not 
fight at all." It was a wise saying, which has often 
since come to my mind. 

Selfishness shows itself as easily on the playground 
as it does anywhere else. 

How many there are who always want to have their 
own way. No matter what others prefer, everything 
must be just as these say. There are tyrants on the 
playground as truly as there ever were in Greece or 
Rome. 

Sometimes these tyrants have their way because they 
are strong, and their playmates are afraid not to do as 
they wish. Sometimes, strange to say, they have their 
way because they are weak. They make such an ado 
when they do not have what they want that the others 
follow them for the sake of peace. They think they are 
leaders ; they would be a little disgusted if they knew 
they were being treated like babies. 

Selfishness may show itself in a hundred ways ; in 
thoughtlessness of the feelings of others, in seeking 
what is pleasant to one's self without considering any one 
else, in taking more than one's share of what is pleasant. 



The Playground. 



117 



All these things may be done under many different 
forms. 

Kindness and generosity have their place in the play- 
ground. There may be a thoughtfulness for one who 
is weaker than the rest, or who is a new comer, or 
whom, for any reason, others may neglect. There is 
an opportunity to stand up for those who are ill-used. 
There is a generous sympathy for those who in any 
way are having a hard time. 

There is an opportunity for honesty and dishonesty on 
the playground. 1 One may cheat in a game no less 
than in business, and can show honesty no less. Indeed, 
the term " fair play " is used in regard to the most 
serious affairs of life. In politics or in business of any 
kind, we hear it said, " Such a person did not have fair 
play." In this use of the word we see the standard of 
play applied to the actual affairs of life. 

There is a great opportunity for energy or laziness, 
presence of mind or carelessness, to show itself on the 
playground. 

In all these ways boys and girls, when they are at 
their play, show pretty well what they are going to be in 
later life. When Napoleon was at a military school, 
the boys were one day playing at war. One set of 
them held a fort which the others were trying to cap- 
ture. The boy, Napoleon, led the attacking party. In 
the midst of the fight there was a flourish of trumpets, 
and a party of officers entered who had come to inspect 
the school. The boys that held the fort forgot their 



1 See, also, chapter XXIX, 



n8 



Ethics for Young People. 



play, and stood staring at the entering group. Napo- 
leon did not lose his head for a moment. He kept his 
party up to their work. He took advantage of the in- 
terruption, and when the besieged recovered their wits, 
their fort was captured. He was already the Napoleon 
who in the real battles of later years knew how to turn 
so many seemingly adverse circumstances to good ac- 
count. 

You may say, " I cannot think of all these things 
when I am playing ; if I did, I should have no time to 
enjoy the game." This is very true. You can, how- 
ever, think of them beforehand, and make up your mind 
what you will do and what you will not do, so firmly 
that your mind will obey when you are not thinking 
about it. 1 Or if, in spite of your purpose, you do some- 
thing that you meant not to do, you will remember it 
afterwards, and your displeasure with yourself will help 
you to do better another time. 

1 In the chapter on Conscience, I shall speak more fully of this power 
of self-command. 



\ / 

y 



Fun. 



119 



y 

CHAPTER XXXIII. 

FUN. 

THE word " fun " as it is used by young people, in- 
cludes a great deal. So far as I can understand, it means 
any kind of " a good time." Certainly a good play, 
such as was referred to in the last chapter, is called fun. 

I shall here use the word fun in its stricter meaning. 
Fun, in this narrower sense, refers to " what is funny." 
The word " funny" is itself used in a very loose way. 
In common speech whatever is surprising is sometimes 
called funny; sometimes even if it is something sad. 

Properly speaking, only that is funny which is 
laughable. I wish then to speak in this chapter of what 
may be found comical by one or another, and of what 
is done or said for the sake of raising a laugh. 

We may often find in kindly and innocent mirth both 
pleasure and refreshment. The opposite of mirth is 
seriousness. One who has no sense of fun takes every- 
thing seriously. It is not well for any one to be serious 
all the time. For one who is so the strain of life is 
often too hard. 

President Lincoln was very fond of a funny story. 
He felt the strain and the burden of the war so strongly 
that, if it had not been for this relief, he would have 
broken down long before the war was over. 

It is a great thing to be able to see the ludicrous side 



120 



Ethics for Young People. 



of one's own mishaps or failures. What one person will 
grieve over, another will carry off with a laugh. One 
may make a mistake, for instance, or meet with an acci- 
dent which is not very severe, and be mortified beyond 
measure. Another will see the funny side of it, and 
find only amusement. A person who can never see the 
funny side of such mishaps, goes through life as if he 
were riding in a carriage without springs. Every little 
inequality makes a bump. 

In the same way one may see the ludicrous side of 
the troublesome blunders of others. I know a lady who 
had a very stupid gardener. She wondered why the 
bulbs that he had set out did not come up. At last 
she dug down to see what had happened. She found 
them all planted upside down. Of course she did not 
like it; but she amused herself with the absurdity of the 
thing, imagining them at some future day sprouting up 
in China to the wonder of the natives. 

While fun is in itself a very good thing, it may, like 
almost anything else that is good, be made a very bad 
thing. 

It may be made a bad thing in two ways. 
In the first place it is bad when there is too much 
of it. 

While it is not well to take all things seriously, it is 
worse to take nothing seriously. The great business of 
life is serious, and one who finds only fun in every- 
thing keeps himself outside the reality of life. He is 
like a bit of thistledown which floats about in the 
wind, while it has no real connection with anything. 



Fun. 



121 



In the second place fun may become a bad thing, be- 
cause it is not of the right kind. 

In the chapter on " Different Kinds of Heroes " we saw 
that a person may be judged pretty fairly by what he 
admires. The object of his admiration shows the 
kind of person he would like to be. A person may be 
judged about as truly by what he finds funny as by 
what he admires. 

One kind of fun which is wrong is that which gives 
pain to others, or which makes sport of the misfortunes 
of others. 

There is hardly anything so painful or unfortunate 
that some will not be found who will laugh at it. The 
savages were sometimes in the habit of tormenting their 
captives. The tortures that these underwent were to 
them an occasion of mirth. Boys sometimes torment 
insects or animals because their struggles seem to them 
funny. 

If we were without the feeling of sympathy, almost 
any weakness or suffering might seem comical. Thus 
to some the infirmities of age, or any deformity in the 
person of another, seem fit objects of ridicule. 

In all such cases a feeling of sympathy would change 
the mirth into pity, or a friendly and helpful interest. 

It would do this in two ways. In the first place we 
should feel so sorry for the persons afflicted that we 
should not feel like laughing at them ; and in the second 
place, we should know that our ridicule, if they should 
be aware of it, would add to their pain. 

A kind sympathy would therefore make it impossible 



122 



Ethics for Young People. 



to laugh at the infirmities or misfortunes of others. 
Those who do this show themselves unfeeling and 
cruel. They put themselves on the level of the sav- 
ages. 

The same kindly feeling would forbid jests that would 
in any way give pain to others. The idea of wit which 
some people have is to say sharp things to another, 
perhaps to twit him with something of which it is sup- 
posed he would be ashamed. 

A person of good feeling would never find sport in 
what gives another pain. 

I have read a story of a youth, who, while walking 
out with his tutor, saw a pair of shoes that a poor 
laborer had left under a hedge while he was busied 
with his work. 4 4 What fun it would be," exclaimed the 
young man, " to hide these shoes, and then to conceal 
ourselves behind the hedge, and see the man's surprise 
and excitement when he can not find them." " I 
will tell you what would be better sport," said the tutor ; 
" put a piece of money into one of the shoes, and then 
hide and watch his surprise when he finds it." This 
the young man did ; and the joy and wonder of the 
poor laborer when he found the money in his shoe was 
as good fun as he wanted. 

It is much better sport to plan pleasant surprises for 
people than to prepare unpleasant ones. 

While we should not make jests that will give another 
pain, we should, on the other hand, not be too sensitive 
at jokes that are played on us. 

Some people are very much annoyed, or perhaps lose 



Fun, 



123 



their temper, if they are laughed at. It very often hap- 
pens that those that are most ready to laugh at others 
are the most displeased when the laugh is against them. 

Such sensitiveness is very weak ; and a person who 
is so weak makes sometimes an unpleasant companion. 
We all laugh at one another sometimes in a friendly 
way, and one who is never willing to be the object of 
such kindly mirth may interrupt the pleasure of his 
companions. 

You should try not to be a person in regard to whom 
your companions will always feel obliged to consider at 
every turn, whether your sensitive feelings are likely to 
be hurt. " One must take as well as give" is a good 
motto for the rough and tumble sport and business of the 
world; just as " One must give as well as take" is a 
good motto, so far as the pleasures of life are con- 
cerned. 

Another kind of joke which is wrong is that which 
is filthy and indecent. It seems to some persons a great 
stroke of wit to say something which would offend nat- 
ural modesty. There is no kind of wit which is so 
cheap, and no kind, of which anybody who would be in 
the true sense of the word a gentleman, should be so 
ashamed. 

Another kind of joke which a right feeling would 
avoid, is that aimed at what is to others an object of 
reverence. To some, profanity seems witty as well as 
manly. This is also a very cheap kind of joke which 
needs no wit for its making. It also shows low and 
unmanly tastes. 



124 



Ethics for Young People. 



We find, then, three kinds of jest which a right feel- 
ing person will avoid : the unkind, the indecent, and 
the profane. 

The play of wit and humor is thus very much like 
other play. It is one of the pleasant and helpful things 
in life. Like other play, it must be kindly, good-tem- 
pered, and pure. Like other play, it must not make up 
the whole of life. Rightly used, it may be one of the 
best helps in bearing the burden and doing the work of 
the world. 



Friends J lip. 



125 



CHAPTER XXXIV. 

FRIENDSHIP. 

WHILE we should be courteous towards all with whom 
we are brought into relation, and should take part in 
the life that is going on about us, we cannot be equally 
intimate with all. Thus within the larger circle of asso- 
ciates are formed smaller groups of those who are spe- 
cially bound together as friends. 

What are known as friendships may be the result of 
various causes. 

Perhaps most often those who call one another friends 
are those whom some chance lias brought together, and 
who are specially united in work or play. In this way 
friends are often simply those who amuse one another. 

Sometimes one considers another his friend because 
he is flattered by him-. This flattery may be either direct 
or indirect. It is direct when it is open praise. It is 
indirect when it is a conformity to one's moods, tastes, 
or prejudices. If one thinks that he has been ill-used, 
it is pleasant to have another join w 7 ith him in indigna- 
tion. It is pleasant to have all one's jealousies, ill-tem- 
pers, 'and vanities thus sympathized with. Tyrants can 
often find no other friendship than this ; and boys and 
girls have sometimes such hangers on, who think it 
worth the while thus to flatter them. The boy or girl of 
right feeling will find nothing more disgusting than this 
sort of companionship. 



126 



Ethics for Young People. 



True friendships are based upon two things. 

One of these things is liking, and the other is respect. 

People like one another when each finds the other 
pleasant company. They have such similarity in tastes 
and interests that they like to be together. 

For real friendship, however, this is not enough. 
For this, respect must be added to liking. You may 
think it strange to speak of boys and girls respecting 
one another. You may think that respect is to be felt 
towards older people only. But boys and girls may be 
as worthy of respect as men and women. 

A woman got into a street car the other day some- 
what burdened with bundles. A little girl of some ten 
or twelve years at once sprang up and gave her a seat. 
The child took her place by the side of her father, who 
had just given up his seat in a similar way. As she 
stood there, holding her father's hand, with a sweet look 
on her face, I could not help respecting her for her act 
of kindness, and for the pleasant way in which it was 
performed. 

Boys and girls who are honest and brave, to whose 
honor and kindness you may trust, these are worthy of 
respect. If you will think of your companions, you 
will find that some you respect, and some perhaps you 
do not. Those whom you respect may be as full of fun 
as the, others, but there is to them something besides 
fun. 

You want for a friend some one whom you would like 
to have with you in trouble, should you meet it, as well 
as in sport; such a one is one who has your respect. 



Friendship. 



127 



Choose, then, for your friends, those whom you can 
respect; and always act so as yourself to deserve the 
respect of your friends and companions. 

Nothing adds more to the pleasantness of life than 
friendships. Friendships involve, however, certain dit- 
ties ; and we have now to notice some of these. 

If one has a friend, one should be loyal to him. This 
loyalty may show itself in several ways. 

If one is with those who speak ill of his friend, it is 
very base to join in such evil speaking. It is very 
base, for instance, to join in ridiculing a friend, except 
in a way that he himself would regard as a harmless 
jest. One should stand up for one's friend when he is 
thus spoken ill of. 

Loyalty to a friend is shown in looking out for his 
interest and helping his plans in every honorable way. 

One should not be jealous of one's friend. Such jeal- 
ousy may show itself in either of two ways. 

One of these ways grows out of the desire to monopo- 
lize the interest of a friend. Some persons are troubled 
if their friend does not seem to be wholly bound up in 
them. They do not realize that the larger the life of 
their friend is, the better worth having is his friendship. 

There is another kind of jealousy which it is more 
difficult to avoid. I mean the unpleasant feeling that 
may arise if one's friend gets, as we say, " ahead" of him. 
Friends are apt to be pretty nearly equal in many ways, 
so that a feeling of rivalry may very easily arise. This 
is so common that there is a familiar saying to the 
effect that a man always has a certain pleasure in hear- 



128 



Ethics for Yonng People. 



ing of the misfortunes of his best friends. I have seen 
in " Punch " a picture of a man reading a magazine 
with a pleased look on his face. His friend, entering, 
notices this, and asks, " Are you reading a favora- 
ble notice of your book?" " No," is the answer; ".I 
am reading an unfavorable notice of yours." For the 
reason stated above, such things may easily happen 
among those who call themselves friends. 

A true friend will rejoice in his friend's successes and 
sorrow in his defeats as though they were his own. 
There is nothing more beautiful than such unselfish 
sympathy. 

A true friend sometimes finds it harder to bear the 
trouble of his friend than his own misfortunes. One can 
make light to himself of his own suffering and call him- 
self weak for yielding to it; but it would seem harsh to 
treat in this way his friend's misfortune. 

While you do well to seek from your friend sympathy 
in your own trouble, do not overburden him with petty 
complaints and discontents. 

Show yourself brave and strong, and be sure that 
you will receive more sympathy from your friend than 
if you whine and grumble. If he sees you trying to 
make light of your trouble, it will seem to him more 
real. If you make too much of it, he will tend to make 
light of it. 

Be honest with your friend. Express frankly your 
own thought. No true person wishes a friend to be 
what Emerson calls a " mush of concessions." If you 
do not show that you have a character and personality 



Friendship. 



129 



of your own, what is there for your friend to respect 
or love? 

If your friend does wrong, tell him kindly and hon- 
estly. A friend who will not thus advise is not worth 
the having. 

If your friend reminds you kindly of your faults, take 
what he says not only pleasantly, but thankfully. Few 
treasures are worth as much as a friend who is wise and 
helpful. Such a one alone can remind us of our 
faults. 

While you seek in all honorable ways to serve your 
friend, never say for him what is false, or do for him 
what is dishonorable. 

I once heard a man say, as the highest praise of 
another business man, that he would not do a dishonor- 
able thing to oblige a friend. 

In school, no less than in business life, one is often 
tempted to say what is false, or to do what is dishonora- 
able for the sake of a friend. This a true friend will 
never ask. If, when you refuse to do this, your friend 
thinks that you show your lack of regard, you can an- 
swer him in the spirit of words of the poet, 1 

" 1 could not love thee, dear, so much 
Loved I not honor more." 



1 Lovelace, " To Jocasta, on going to the wars." 



13° 



Ethics for Young People. 



CHAPTER XXXV. 

THE HOME. 

BESIDES the friendships which we form in the world 
are those which grow up naturally in our homes and 
which are apt to be, as they ought to be, the closest and 
the dearest of any. 

Almost all living creatures have their homes. The 
birds have their nests, the wild beasts their dens, the 
bees their hives. 

To almost all creatures these homes are the dearest 
places in the world. How gladly the birds fly to their 
nests at night! How frightened are the parent birds 
if a stranger approaches the nest where their little ones 
are ! How fierce are the wild beasts if any one draws 
near their lair ! Nothing rouses the fear or the rage of 
these lower creatures so much as anything that seems to 
threaten the quiet of their homes. How eager a horse 
is to get back to the stable, often so very dismal, which 
is his home. 

To men, also, the home is apt to be, and should be, 
the dearest place on earth. I suppose that no song 
was ever sung so often or by so many people in widely 
distant lands as that which is so familiar to us all, and 
which many can sing who can sing little else, — the 
song of which the refrain is, 

" Home, home, sweet, sweet home." 



Home. 



Though the animals have homes as we do, their rela- 
tion to their homes is very different from our relation 
to our homes. 

Think how little while the animals are interested in 
their young, and how soon the young cease to care for 
their parents and for one another. The young come 
into the world, and live together for a little while. The 
parents take care of them. They feed them and keep 
them warm ; they fight for them if need be ; some- 
times they will even die for them. But very soon the 
little group breaks up. The young birds, for instance, 
in a few weeks grow strong enough to fly. They leave 
their nests, and scatter, this way and that. In time 
they build nests of their own, and I do not know whether 
they would recognize one another or the parent birds 
again. 

In our homes, boys and girls live for years before 
they are able to take care of themselves. When at last 
they go out into the world and have homes of their 
own, they still remember one another and love one 
another, and still remember with love and gratitude the 
parents to whom they owe so much. 

To many the home in which their childhood was 
passed continues, as long as they live, to be among the 
places that they love the most; and it is a great joy if 
now and then, perhaps on Thanksgiving day or Christ- 
mas, they can go back to it again. 

The fact that children are so long in growing up, and 
pass so many years together under the care of their 
father and mother, is most important in the history of 



132 Ethics for Yoicng People. 



the race. During this long period of growth in the 
home they become fitted, as they could not in any 
other way, to take their place in the larger world of men 
and women. If children remained in their home as 
short a time as the young of the animals do, it is prob- 
able that men would have never risen above the state 
of barbarians. The home has been the great civilizer 
of the world. 

We have seen in other chapters the importance in the 
world of sympathy and affection, of obedience and trust- 
fulness. All these are learned in the family as they 
could not so well be learned anywhere else. 

Through the habit of loving brothers and sisters and 
parents men came very slowly to have somewhat the 
same regard for other persons. Through obedience to 
the commands of parents men have formed the habit 
of obedience, so that they submit easily to the laws 
of society. Thus it is very largely through the influ- 
ence of the home, and from the fact that our childhood 
lasts so many years, that the race of man has risen from 
barbarism to civilization. 

The life in the home, which is so important, and 
which is to most so pleasant, involves many duties, a 
few of which we will notice. 

Since the home ought to be one of the pleasantest 
places in the world, it is the duty of every member of a 
family to try to make it so. Rude ways of acting and 
speaking, which would be faults anywhere, are greater 
faults at home than anywhere else. 

I have spoken of home as if it were almost always 



Home. 



133 



pleasant. It is not always so. To some their home is 
very dreary. The trouble is, often, that some, or per- 
haps all, do not try to make it pleasant. They live 
each for himself, and do not care how much they may 
wound those about them. 

Some persons are pleasanter and more courteous any- 
where else than they are at home. A voice that is very 
sweet when addressed to outside friends or acquaint- 
ances, becomes sometimes sharp and petulant when 
addressed to members of the family. Some who are 
very gracious and thoughtful towards other people, are 
very rude and inconsiderate towards those who belong 
to their own household. 

Some persons, young and old, in their own family 
are interested only in their own affairs. At home 
they are silent and absorbed, though when they go out 
into the world they may be lively enough. 

One should be more courteous, more polite, more 
thoughtful, more entertaining, and more helpful at home 
than anywhere else. 

It is indeed only those who are courteous at home 
that are really courteous anywhere ; for if they are 
rude there, their manners in the outside world do not 
really belong to them. They are put on like their fine 
dress, and are taken off again with that. 

Some people, too, are slovenly at home, who look 
very well when they go anywhere else. But home 
should be always neat as well as pleasant. 

But you may say, " Is there no place, then, where 
one can be himself ? where one can be free and easy 



134 



Ethics for Young People. 



without being troubled by the thought of how he ought 
to speak and act and look?" 

But what do you really consider yourself ? or what 
kind of a self do you want? When you are fretful, and 
disobliging, and sulky, and bound up in your own plans 
or amusements, are you most really yourself ? Are you 
not truly yourself when you are kind and thoughtful for 
others, when by a pleasant word or kind act you make 
those about you happier? This at any rate is what 
ought to be yourself. 

Such a life as I have described in the family has two 
results. It makes the home pleasant, and it makes the 
boy or the girl really pleasant. 

When one who has lived like this at home goes out 
into the world, he does not need to put on a show of 
good manners. His good manners have become a part 
of himself. 

Thus the family may do for young people now what 
it has been doing for the world all along ; that is, it 
may civilize them. 

To civilize is obviously to make civil. The uncivil 
person is an uncivilized person. That is, he is so far a 
barbarian. The most natural place to learn to be civil 
is the home ; though one who has not learned it there, 
must try to learn it where he can. 

In the chapter on Obedience I have spoken of the 
obedience due to parents. This is the first duty of a 
child, except in the rare cases where the parent com- 
mands something that is really wrong. 

The son and the daughter should also try to help 



Home. 



135 



their parents, and should do this, not as a matter of 
duty, but out of love and interest, The boy should 
not fret at having to bring wood, or to do something in 
the garden, or to run on an errand. The daughter 
should try to find little things that she can do about the 
house. She should be glad to do a little sewing, to 
help to care for the younger children, and especially to 
take care of her own things. Sons and daughters 
should do this out of interest, because it is their home. 
Few things will please the father and mother more than 
such interest in the home. 

Sometimes the children have had advantages that 
their parents did not have. Whatever good they may 
have gained in this way they should try to use in such 
a way as to make the home pleasanter and happier. 

There is very much that brothers and sisters can do 
for one another. This relationship ought to be one of 
the pleasantest and most helpful in life. 

Girls are apt to be more gentle and refined than boys ; 
they can thus do very much to make their brothers gen- 
tler ; not so much by formal lecturing as by the influ- 
ence that comes naturally from intercourse with them. 
Advice, when it is needed, from a sister to a brother, if 
it is kindly given, may often do very much good. 

Darwin, who was one of the most famous students of 
nature, tells us that it was his sisters who made him 
humane ; that is, who made him kind and thoughtful 
He began his studies of nature when he was a boy. He 
made collections of birds' eggs. Through the influence 
of his sisters he became so thoughtful for the birds that 
he used to take only a single egg out of a nest, so that 



136 



Ethics for Young People. 



the old birds should not be troubled because their little 
home had been broken up. 

Young men are apt to think that young women are 
in some respects better than they. A sister may at 
least do something to make her brother keep this re- 
spect for women, which may be an important thing in his 
life. She may do this simply by the force of her own 
character, not setting herself up as though she were 
above him, but simply by being true and kind and sym- 
pathetic. 

Then, too, a sister should be glad to help her brother 
as he may need with her needle and other womanly im- 
plements. The boy is very helpless about many little 
things with which the girl is quite at home. 

The brother can help the sister in his turn. He is 
stronger than she, and can do many a little service in 
return for what he has received. He should be glad to 
put his strength and courage and activity at her service. 

If brothers can be so much to their sisters, and sisters 
to their brothers, none the less may sister be helpful to 
sister, and brother to brother. 

It is a great thing to have so near a friend as a 
brother or a sister, to whom one may confide whatever 
happens to fill his heart, to whom one may always look 
for sympathy and aid. 

I know that the relation of brothers and sisters is 
sometimes very different from this. It is a great pity, 
when the good and the pleasure that may come from 
this relationship are lost. When they are lost it is 
always through somebody's fault. Be very careful that 
it is not through yours. 



The School. 



137 



CHAPTER XXXVI. 

THE SCHOOL. 

As was implied in the chapter on Obedience, 1 the 
school is the scholar's place of business. From this 
several things will follow. 

One is, that you should be regular in attendance. 
You should always be at school, unless there is some 
really important reason why you cannot. What should 
you think of a clerk who should stay away from his 
place whenever he had a mind to ? 

The mere attendance at school is training in regu- 
larity. Unless one has a habit of regularity he will 
accomplish very little in the world. Irregularity in 
attendance also breaks tip the work of the school. It 
interrupts the connection of one day's work with that of 
the next, besides burdening the scholar with extra work 
to make up for lost time. 

Try always to be in season. What would you think 
of a clerk who should drop into the office or the store 
half an hour behind time? I am afraid one who should 
do this often would soon be told that he need not come 
any more. 

There are few more important habits than that of 
punctuality, and in order to be sure of being punc- 



1 Chapter XXVI. 



138 



Ethics for Young People. 



tual one should make it a habit. There is, on the other 
hand; no habit more easily formed, or more trouble- 
some, than that of always being a little behindhand in 
an appointment. 

Suppose one who has to meet half a dozen persons 
at a given hour is ten minutes late. He puts back the 
business ten minutes, and will have wasted just an hour 
of other people's time. 

The scholar who is late at school wastes other peo- 
ple 's time as well as his own. What a disturbance 
it is when he comes lounging in and interrupts all the 
other scholars at their work. 

Always come neat and clean to the school. An 
employer would soon dismiss a clerk who should come 
with unwashed face and hands, and with untidy clothes. 
The scholar who comes to school untidy and unwashed 
disgraces his home as well as himself. No matter if it 
is his own fault, it is the home that will bear much of 
the shame of it. Who would want to disgrace his 
home? 

Be honest at school. Scholars sometimes borrow 
pencils, paper, and other things, and do not return or 
replace them. Books and instruments that belong to 
the school are sometimes kept by the scholar. False 
excuses for failures are sometimes given. All these 
things are as bad as any other dishonesty. 

At school attend to the work of the school. What 
should you think of a clerk at his desk who, instead of 
keeping accounts, should draw pictures in his account 
books, or get up sly games with the other clerks. I 



The School. 



139 



fancy that he would very soon be told that he might 
amuse himself elsewhere. 

I have said that the school is your place of business. 
I must now add that it is the place of your business. 
It is for yourself that you are working at the school, and 
for nobody else. Your parents and friends are inter- 
ested in your success, but it is because your success in 
school will fit you for success later in the world. 

While the school is, as I have said, the place of your 
business, you may be helped to fulfil its duties, by re- 
membering the disappointment which your failure would 
cause to your parents and friends. 

You have perhaps heard of the famous French scien- 
tist, Pasteur, to whom so many people that have been 
bitten by mad dogs, have been sent from this country. 
The discovery that he made in regard to the cause and 
nature of hydrophobia is only one of many which have 
been of the greatest service to mankind. When he was 
a boy at school, Pasteur at first neglected his studies. 
He preferred fishing and other amusements to the work 
of the school. At last, however, he realized that his 
father, who had little means, was making great sacrifices 
in order that he might obtain an education. He then 
began to study in good earnest. It was the thought 
of what he owed to his father that made him what he is. 

The scholar sometimes thiriks of the teacher as if he 
were his enemy. The teacher is called a " master," or 
" mistress," and the scholar feels himself to be in some 
sort a slave. Really the teacher is simply working for 
the scholar. He is his helper, performing for him one 
of the greatest services that can be done. 



140 Ethics for Young People. 



College students used sometimes to carry away the 
chapel bell and hide it. They did this partly for the 
fun of the thing, and partly, perhaps, with the idea that 
the absence of the bell would be an excuse for irregu- 
larity in attendance on college exercises. In most cases 
a great disturbance was made about such an act. There 
was a great examination of students, a great search 
for the bell, and threats of punishment for the offender. 
In one case, however, the president of the college sim- 
ply said to the students, " Young gentlemen, the bell 
was solely for your convenience. It was thought that it 
would help you to wake in the morning, and to be reg- 
ular in attendance at college exercises. If you do not 
want it, it is none of our affair. We shall take no trou- 
ble to find it. You may do without it as long as you 
like. But no student will be excused from absence or 
tardiness on account of the absence of the bell." I need 
hardly say that the bell was soon in its place. 

All the rules of the school are like the chapel bell, 
simply helps to the scholar in doing the work of the 
school. Like the chapel bell they are on his account; 
only he cannot be left to choose whether he will, or will 
not, disregard them ; for by such disregard his life 
may be greatly harmed. 

I know that young people are restless and fond of 
sport. I know that the sunlight out of doors looks very 
pleasant, and the thought of play is very attractive, and 
I know that their attention is very easily turned ; in a word, 
that they are bubbling over with life and activity. 
This makes it all the harder for them to do the work 



The School. 



141 



which is needed, in order that they may be fitted to 
take their place later in the world. These facts show the 
importance of the rules that seem so hard. They are 
helps in doing what the scholar cannot afford to leave 
undone, and which most young people could hardly do 
without. 

Think how many have toiled under the most painful 
circumstances to get knowledge. 

William Cobbett, who was a distinguished writer on 
political subjects in England, was in his youth a private 
soldier, receiving as wages only six pence ( about twelve 
and a half cents) a day. He tells us how he studied. 
When he needed a book, a pen, or paper, he had to go 
without some portion of food, though he was half- 
starved. The edge of his berth when at sea, or that of 
his guard-bed when on shore, w T as his seat to study in. 
In the winter he could have no light, except that of the 
fire, and that only in his turn. In this way he pursued 
the studies that are made so easy for you at school, 
especially English Grammar, which interested him 
greatly. 1 

When Lincoln was practising law, he interrupted his 
business in order to study mathematics, so as to learn 
what it is " to demonstrate." 

Charles James Fox was a distinguished English states- 
man. When he was appointed Secretary of State, he 
took writing-lessons like a schoolboy, because some 
one criticised his handwriting. 



1 See Smiles' " Self Help," which contains many incidents of similar ear- 
nestness. 



I 4 2 



Ethics for Young People, 



These men, as many others have done, pursued under 
great hardship, or at great personal inconvenience, stud- 
ies that are made easy to those that can go to school. 
At school the scholar has books, time, help, and every 
thing that is needed for his work. Yet some think it is 
hard to do, even under these pleasant circumstances, what 
others have thought worth doing under great difficulty. 
Yet what they learned was of no more value to them 
than the learning that is forced into the laziest school- 
boy is to him ; except that by their energy they could 
make better use of it. 



Patriotism. 143 



CHAPTER XXXVII. 

PATRIOTISM. 

As it is natural to love our home, it is also natural to 
love our country. As the poorest homes are sometimes 
most tenderly loved, so the poorest and barest country 
is sometimes held in most affection. There was per- 
haps never a country in the world the inhabitants of 
which have not, at some time or other, been willing to 
suffer and die for it. 

Such affection is natural, because the town and the 
nation in which one has lived is, like the home, bound 
up with all the experiences of one's life. The games of 
childhood, the affection of parents, the love of friends, 
all the joys, the sorrows, the activities of life, are bound 
up in the thought of one's native land ; so that men 
have felt for their country an affection made up of all 
their other affections. 

The love of one's country is called Patriotism. 

It is not merely natural to be patriotic ; it is reason- 
able and right. Nearly all that makes life pleasant and 
desirable comes through the town or the nation to which 
we belong. Thus our gratitude should make them dear 
to us. 

Think how many thousands in our country have toiled 
for us ! They have made roads and they have built 
churches and schoolhouses. They have established 



144 



Ethics for Young People. 



mails and post-offices. They have cultivated farms to 
provide for our needs, and have built ships that cross 
the ocean to bring to us the good things which we could 
not produce at home. They have provided protection 
against wrong-doers. So, if we sleep in peace, and 
work and study and play in safety, and are wise and 
trained in the various arts of life, it is to the town and 
the nation that we owe nearly all these advantages. 

Then too, in every nation such good results have 
been produced at great cost of suffering and life. It is 
because there have been patriots who have loved their 
country better than they loved themselves, that we have a 
country that we can love. 

The American especially ought to love his country, 
because, in it, some of these results are reached more 
perfectly than elsewhere. There is no country in which 
the people are so free, and in which the freedom of one 
interferes so little with the freedom of all the rest. 

We are so accustomed to see men of every class and 
condition going to the polls, and voting for what are 
called their rulers, though more truly they should be 
called the servants of the people, that it seems to us a 
wholly natural and common thing. We often forget 
that this is something very uncommon ; and that there 
are those in other countries who look with longing at 
the freedom which we enjoy. 

Such liberty is extending more and more in the world, 
but it is largely through the example of our country 
that this extension of liberty is accomplished. 

Our liberty and the other blessings that go with it have 



Patriotism. 



145 



been bought at a great price. No nation has had more 
splendid heroes, who have braved all danger for their 
country, who have toiled for it, and suffered and died 
for it than America. 

When the bells are ringing and the cannon are firing 
on the Fourth of July, you must not think merely of the 
noise and the fun. You must remember those who on 
that day agreed that they would risk their lives and 
everything that was dear to them, that their country 
might be free. You must think not merely of those, but 
of those also who at other times of peril have given 
themselves for their nation's good, of those who found the 
land a wilderness, and suffered pain and privation, while 
they made the beginning of a nation. You must think 
also of those who ever since that time, whenever the 
liberty or the unity of the nation was in peril, have 
sprung to its defence. 

These heroes are more in number than we can begin 
to name. There was one, however, whose name is so 
familiar that it has become commonplace to us, but 
who was one of the greatest heroes, and one of the best 
men, that ever lived. I mean George Washington. 
Through the whole world, his name stands for honor 
and courage, wisdom and patriotism. You must not let 
the fact that his name is so common make you forget 
that there are few heroes of history that deserve honor 
so truly as he. 

At the end of the war of the revolution, Washington 
was at the head of a mighty army, and the object of the 
enthusiastic love of the whole people. He might easily 



146 



Ethics for Young People. 



have made of himself a king or an emperor. It was a 
marvel to the civilized world when he quietly laid down 
all this power. He twice suffered himself to be chosen 
President ; and then he became simply a private citizen. 
This seems to us now the most natural thing in the 
world, but really it was something very rare ; and gave 
him a fame such as few heroes of the world enjoy. 

You cannot realize, as those of us do who remember 
it, the heroism that was shown in the war which pre- 
served the union of our states, and put an end to slavery 
in our country. Young men gave up what was dearest 
to them in life * mothers sent their sons to the war, 
hardly hoping to see them again. These sacrifices were 
made for the sake of the country which they loved. 
You must remember this on " Memorial Day," and not 
merely look upon the day as a holiday, with a show of 
processions with flowers and music. 

There have been heroes in peace as well as in war ; 
men who have conquered the wilderness, who have up- 
held justice, and have helped on whatever was good 
and noble. 

We ought, then, all to be patriots, and love the coun- 
try which has done so much for us and at the cost of 
so many true lives. 

But patriotism is not merely the loving of one's coun- 
try, and the being proud of it. It has its duties as well 
as its pleasures. We should not be contented merely to 
take the good that others have won for us, doing noth- 
ing ourselves for the country for which they did so 
much. 



Patriotism. 



147 



There are those who are unworthy to live in our 
country because they are not willing to suffer the least 
inconvenience on its account. 

There are those who are among the most prosperous 
in the land, who have received more good from the 
country than most others, who will not even take the 
trouble to go to the polls and vote. They will see their 
city misruled, and will not even take the trouble to cast 
the ballot that would help to save it. 

There are many men who sell their votes. Think of 
all the cost of money and of noble lives at which our 
liberty has been won. Think how in many parts of the 
world men are looking with longing at the liberty 
which we enjoy; yet there are those to whom this hard- 
won freedom means an opportunity to make a little 
money by selling their vote. 

There are those still worse. I mean those who find 
in politics an opportunity to make larger gains in 
meaner ways. They buy votes and sell those that they 
have bought. They make bargains and " deals." The 
welfare of the country does not concern them. They 
seek only their own gain. 

There are those to whom the light laws that are over 
us seem grievous. They rebel against all restraint. 

There are those who stir up excitement among the 
people, setting class against class, that they themselves 
may be advanced. 

These things I name, that those who read these 
chapters may resolve that when they are old enough to 
have the rights of citizens, they will use them as patriots, 



148 



Ethics for Young People. 



and refrain from, and oppose, such corruption as I have 
described. 

There are other ways of serving the country besides 
those that I have named. 

All the private virtues, honesty and industry, are its 
best helps. Whatever tends to make men wiser and 
better is a service to the country. 

The time may come, though I hope it will not, 
when it will be necessary to repeat the sacrifices of the 
past ; to give money and life and what is dearer than 
life, that the nation may be preserved. If that time 
shall come, meet it as heroes met it in the past. 

The country will one day be in the hands of those who 
are now boys and girls. Serve it and guard it, and do 
all that you can to promote its good. 



Kindness to Animals. 



149 



CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

KINDNESS TO ANIMALS. 

We have considered the importance of kindness and 
sympathy towards the persons with whom we have to 
do. We should show a like sympathy and kindness 
towards the dumb animals, which have, also, their place 
in our lives. 

We all know that the animals can suffer as truly as 
men can, but there are many who do not realize this. 
If they did realize it, I think there would be less cruelty 
to them. 

A young man once told me that, when he was a boy, 
he liked to torment living creatures, simply for the fun 
of the thing; but when some one explained to him that 
they really suffered, and that the movements which 
amused him were expressions of pain, he had a horror 
of such cruelty and never practised it again. 

There are many reasons why we should be kind to 
animals. One is because they are so much in our power. 
The very fact of their weakness and our strength should 
make us merciful to them. To take advantage of our 
power is mean. It is like tormenting a child because it 
cannot help itself. 

Another reason why we should be kind to animals is 
that so often we have to take their lives. They are 
wholly at our mercy. Some we have to use for food. 



150 Ethics for Young People. 



Others are injurious or unclean, and we have, in self- 
defence, to destroy them. This fact should give us a 
certain tenderness, so that we should avoid giving them 
useless pain. 

So far as the domestic animals are concerned, we owe 
so much to them that gratitude should make us kind. 

Here is a man, for instance, whose horse performs the 
work by which he earns money to live. One would 
think that gratitude, if not self-interest, would make him 
kind. How often the horse is half-fed. Perhaps the 
poor owner cannot always help this. But he can help 
beating him, and overloading him, and making him 
travel when he is so lame that he cannot step without 
suffering. 

Those who do not mean to be unkind are often cruel 
by thoughtlessness. They leave the horse uncovered in 
the cold. They use too short a check-rein. They use 
a check-rein on a long journey, or with a heavy load, or 
when going up hill. In none of these cases should any 
check-rein be used. 

Think how a dog loves its master, often in spite of 
cruelty; and yet how often is the master cruel ! 

The chief reason for kindness to animals is, however, 
that which I named first : the fact that they really suffer. 
What sort of man or boy can that be who can think it 
fun to cause suffering? One who can cause this should 
himself be made to suffer. 

One good way to gain sympathy for animals is to 
study about them and to observe them. One who does 
this can hardly fail to get interested in them. He will 



Kindness to Animals. 



find so much intelligence, so many curious ways of 
living, so much devotion and kindliness, that he will 
sympathize with them in spite of himself. Even the 
fiercest beasts, for instance, have a devotion for their 
young, and will sometimes die in their defence. 

One should not only be kind to animals one's self; 
one should so far as possible prevent cruelty towards 
them. If beys are persecuting some unhappy creature, 
if a man is unmerciful to his horse, it is a noble thing to 
interfere, if one can, in behalf of the oppressed. Many 
a boy or girl has thus done something to check the 
cruelty that is shown to some dumb beast, and thus to 
lessen, by so much, the suffering of the world. 



152 



Ethics for Young People. 



CHAPTER XXXIX. 

COMPANIONS. 

We have considered certain things which it is well to 
do, and others which it is well not to do. We have now 
in a few chapters to consider certain helps and hin- 
drances to right doing. 

Nothing is more important in this respect than the 
kind of companions that one has. If a young man 
"goes," as we say, " to the bad," it is almost always on 
account of the kind of companions that he has had. 
On the other hand, companions may be as helpful as 
they may be misleading. 

The reason for this influence of others is that man is 
an imitative being; that is, he tends to do what he sees 
people around him doing. 

This imitativeness has been one of the greatest helps 
in the development of the world. If a young child 
learned only what it was directly taught, it would learn 
comparatively little. Its chief education consists in 
seeing what those about it do, and in trying to do the 
same ; and this kind of education goes on, more or less, 
as long as we live. 

So the lower and more barbarous peoples have been 
raised by imitating the manner of life of more civilized 
peoples. 

When we think of it, we see that this tendency to imi- 



Companions. 



153 



tate is extremely natural. I will state two or three 
things that will illustrate this. 

A man has a tendency to perform any action or to 
speak any word of which he thinks. If a boy really 
thinks of striking another, he has a certain tendency to 
strike him. The reason he does not always do it is, 
that he thinks of other things at the same time. He 
thinks of possible punishment from parent or teacher; 
or he thinks that the boy will possibly strike back ; or 
some regard for the boy may come into his mind ; or he 
may think that it would be a low and mean thing to do. 

If he does strike the other boy, it is because all these 
other thoughts for the moment disappear; and the 
thought of the blow, and of the offence which caused 
this thought, alone remain. 

Now, in any occasion that may arise where we have to 
speak or act, something that we have heard others say or 
do under similar circumstances naturally comes into the 
mind, and with it comes a tendency to say or do the 
same. 

Suppose, for instance, a boy has for his companions 
those who, when they are angry or anything goes wrong 
with them, use profane speech. When he is angry, or 
when anything goes wrong with him, the expressions 
that they use are the first that come to his thought, 
and with them comes a tendency to use the same. 
When he first went with them, he was perhaps offended 
or shocked by this kind of speech ; but familiarity has 
taken away much or all of that feeling, so that, when 
these words come to his thought, the feeling which 



154 



Ethics for Young People, 



would keep them back has been very much lessened, 
if it has not been wholly destroyed. 

What is true of profanity is true of any other kind of 
speech or act. It is difficult for a young person who 
lives much among those whose speech is faulty to con- 
tinue to talk grammatically. This example shows how 
we tend to imitate our companions. 

Much is said in these days about " hypnotism." We 
understand by hypnotism the fact that one person may 
be brought so under the influence of another, as to 
say and do, and even to see and think, only what the 
other suggests. If, for instance, the other suggests that 
there is a cow in the room, the hypnotized person will 
see a cow in the room, and will perhaps make great 
efforts to drive it away. It is doubtful if some grave 
crimes have not been committed in this manner. 

In all this we see an exaggerated form of the kind of 
influence of which we have been speaking. The sugges- 
tion has such power, in this case, because it alone occu- 
pies the mind. The suggestions made by our ordinary 
companions, simply perhaps by their way of speaking 
and acting, tend to have a like influence. They control 
us less, because other influences are working in other 
directions ; but almost every young person who falls 
into bad habits shows that these suggestions may some- 
times get as complete control of a person as is the case 
in hypnotism. 

Besides what are called "bad habits," there are other 
habits hardly less bad, that are caught from one's com- 
panions. Such are habits of frivolity, of unkind gossip, 



Companions. 



and whatever may tend to lower the standard of our 
lives. 

Good habits of life, of thought, and of feeling are 
helped as truly by good companionship as they are 
hindered by bad. 

If the nature of the companions among whom we live 
has such an incalculable influence over us, we see what 
power we have to shape our lives by the right choice of 
our companions. 

We should remember, too, that we may as truly have 
influence over our companions as they over us. We 
should dread, more than almost anything else, the 
thought that another has been made worse by associat- 
ing with us. To injure the nature of another is to do 
about as much harm as it is possible for us to do in this 
world. 



1 5 6 



Ethics for Young People. 



CHAPTER XL. 




READING. 



There is a companionship that may be more helpful 
than any other; that is, the companionship of books. 
It is not always easy to meet the persons that we should 
most gladly choose as companions. In these days, how- 
ever, it is possible for almost every one to obtain good 
books. 

As books may be the most helpful of companions, so 
they may be the most harmful. As some books are 
better than our ordinary associates, so other books are 
worse than our companions, and have a power to cor- 
rupt that is all the greater because the books may fol- 
low us into our most lonely and quiet hours. 

Do not be afraid to read books that require a little 
thought. How the muscles of the body grow soft and 
flabby when no strain is put upon them ! So the men- 
tal fibres become relaxed and weak, when no strain is 
put upon them. 

The mind* is weakened also, rather than strengthened, 
by reading too many books. One goes to the library to 
get a book that he has never read. If it is a book that 
is just published, he is all the more pleased. He hurries 
through it, and then goes to the library again to get 
another book that is new to him. 

In this way he gets very little good out of any of the 



Reading. 



157 



books he reads. What he reads passes through the 
mind so rapidly, and is so soon replaced by something 
else, that it makes very little definite impression. The 
mind gets so used to looking out for something fresh, 
that it loses the interest, and thus the power, to grasp 
any thought or any information so as to hold it fast and 
make it its own. 

We should laugh at a little girl who should say that 
she knew how to sew, when all she did was to draw the 
thread through the cloth, so that nothing remained of 
all that she was doing. Should we say that anyone who 
forgets as fast as he reads, knows how to read, any bet- 
ter than that little girl knew how to sew? 

There is a proverb that says, " Beware of the man of 
one book." It means that a man who has taken a good 
book and read it, and re-read it, so as to get the mastery 
of it, will have vastly more power than another, who 
skims over one book eager to get hold of the next. 
Plutarch's Lives, for instance, thus studied, has formed 
a great many heroes. 

Reading affects the moral nature and one's habit of 
feeling, for good or for evil, as much as it does the 
mind. 

Many a boy has been utterly ruined by reading low 
novels ; and many who have not been absolutely ruined 
have received a taint which has corrupted to some ex- 
tent their lives. 

On the other hand, many a man dates the beginning 
of his really manly life from the reading of some book 
that stimulated his best nature. 



i 5 8 



Ethics for Young People. 



The improvement or the lowering of one's taste is of 
less importance, but still of real importance. It is a 
great thing in the world to be able to enjoy the best. 
Would it not be a pity to go to a picture gallery that 
contains some of the noblest pictures in the world, and 
find one's self unable to enjoy any except those that 
were low, or coarse, or worthless? So, in a world that 
contains so many noble books, it is very hard if one has 
trained his taste in such a way as to be able to enjoy 
only the poorest. 

It is this corruption of the taste which is one of the 
ways in which the reading of poor books harms the 
most. One thinks that he will, for a while, read 
wretched novels, and after that he will take something 
better. He finds, however, often that it is too late. He 
has spoiled his taste for what is good. 

There are so many public libraries in these days, and 
books are so cheap, that every one of us has the best 
books at his command, as well as the worst. It is pleas- 
ant to think how many are making their lives better and 
stronger and nobler by such means. It is sad to think 
how many are ruining their minds and corrupting their 
hearts out of this abundance. 

Try then to get hold of books that are worth reading. 
If you read a novel, take one that is strong and pure. 
One might as well go to the dram-shop or the opium 
den, as to devote himself to reading a kind of novel that 
is only too common. 

Then there are the works on popular science that will 
tell you about this wonderful world ; and there are the 



Reading. 



*59 



stories of great men that will show you how to make 
your life noble ; there is the history of the past which, 
if it is well told, is, to an unspoiled mind, more inter- 
esting than many a novel. In a word, there is no limit 
to the healthful and helpful books that are at your com- 
mand. In the midst of these, what a pity it would be 
if you should take only those that would do you harm. 



i6o 



Ethics for Young People. 



CHAPTER XLI. 

THE IMAGINATION. 
THE mind is always busy. 

You see a boy sitting on the door-step or lying under 
a tree. You say, perhaps, that he is doing nothing. 
He is doing something. In one way, he is pretty busy. 
He is flunking. 

I do not mean that he is thinking seriously about 
something that interests him. I mean simply that 
there is passing through his mind, a stream of thoughts 
more or less clear, and of fancies more or less distinct. 

Perhaps, he is lazily recalling what he did yesterday, 
or planning what he will do to-morrow. Perhaps, he is 
idly watching something that is going on about him. 
Perhaps, if you should interrupt him, and ask what he 
was thinking about, he might really not know what to 
say, because all had been so vague. His wits, as we 
say, had been " wool gathering." But his mind had 
been busy, even if he has forgotten what it was busy 
about. 

So if people are working, the man with his saw or 
hoe, the woman with her broom or her needle, their 
thoughts are busy all the time. Sometimes they are 
thinking about their work, sometimes about something 
very different ; but their minds are never perfectly at 
rest. 



TJic Imagination. 



161 



It is strange to think of all these minds in the world 
always active, of our own minds always active, at least 
when we are awake ; possibly when we are asleep. 

Surely it is very important for us to consider what 
these busy minds are busied about, for nothing can af- 
fect our lives so much as this constant activity of our 
thought. 

A person sometimes " talks to himself." It is a fool- 
ish habit, for he sometimes lets out secrets, and is over- 
heard saying unpleasant things about the people who 
are present. But all this thinking that never stops is 
really a conversation with ourselves. 

There is, then, a companionship with ourselves that is 
closer and more important than that with persons or 
books. 

How important it is that the self with which we con- 
verse so constantly should be wise, pure, and well mean- 
ing. 

If any bad company does harm, the self, when it is 
not thus wise and pure and well-meaning, does more 
harm than any other companion. 

In all this intercourse with ourselves, nothing is more 
important than what comes to us through the imagina- 
tion. 

As was implied above, there is a succession of pictures 
passing through the mind with other thoughts ; perhaps 
there are more pictures than any other kind of thoughts. 
These pictures are, for the most part, drawn very par- 
tially and imperfectly ; but they are distinct enough to 
let us know what they stand for, and to interest our minds. 



Ethics for Young People. 



These pictures are of what we have seen, of what we 
have read, of what we have fancied, of what we hope 
to see or to do, and of what we would like to do, when 
there is perhaps no hope of our doing it. 

There is one very singular thing about these pictures. 
The more interested we are in them, or the oftener 
we turn to them, the more distinct do they become. It 
is as if, in a picture gallery, the paintings that the 
owner loved and that he visited every day should 
stand out bright and clear; while those for which he 
cared little should fade away. 

In going through such a gallery we should learn 
exactly what the tastes of the owner are. So if we 
could just glance into one of these mental picture gal- 
leries, we could tell, better than in almost any other way, 
what sort of a person it is whose mind we are looking 
into. 

We could tell not only what the person is : we could 
tell something of what he is going to be; for in this 
picture gallery the future is often represented before it 
becomes a fact. Indeed it is the picture that tends to 
give its shape to the life. 

Temptation gains more power through these pictures 
of the imagination than in almost any other way. 

A man sometimes does wrong by a sudden impulse, 
as when he strikes another in a moment of unreasoning 
rage; but for the most part the imagination prepares 
the way with its picturing. 

A young man, for instance, is tempted to take money 
that does not belong to him. At first it is not a tempta- 



The Imagination. 



tion ; it is merely a fancy. He thinks what a nice thing 
it would be to have the money, and pictures the life he 
would lead with it. After this sort of imagery has 
pleased him for a while till it has grown so distinct as to 
haunt him, comes the vision of taking the money, the 
representation of one way or another in which it might 
be done without discovery, until these pictures also 
haunt him. We have already seen, in a former chapter, 
the way that suggestions affect the life. These sugges- 
tions of the imagination gain more and more power, 
until at last they fill the mind> and the man is almost 
forced to perform the act which he has gone over so 
often in his imagination. Through this repetition the 
deed has lost its repulsiveness, and has come to seem 
quite a matter of course. 

What is true of this crime is true of other crimes and 
faults. The mind plays with the picture of them, until 
suddenly the picture has become a fact. 

When evil imaginations do not become embodied in 
outward act, they yet of necessity corrupt and degrade 
the mind. Discontent, envy, anger, impurity, all nour- 
ish themselves by these pictures of the imagination, 
until the mind has become controlled and debased by 
them. 

If evil imaginations have such power, when the im- 
agination works purely and nobly it may become 
equally a power of good. The picturing of kindly and 
magnanimous acts may shape the life to their like- 
ness. 

A healthy imagination is also a source of true pleas- 



1 64 



Ethics for Young People. 



ure. By reading carefully, by keeping one's eyes open 
in the world, one may store the mind with pictures that 
will later bring satisfaction. 

We should train the imagination to reproduce what 
we see. Most of us, when we see a beautiful landscape 
or picture, go away with the vaguest possible remem- 
brance of it. It is a great help to re-picturing in the 
imagination, to be able to draw or paint. One who can 
do this has learned both to see and to re-produce. It is 
a good plan to look at an object, and then try to draw 
it from memory. If we cannot do this, it is well to 
close the eyes and try to recall a beautiful object that 
we have seen, and then to look at it again, and observe 
how far our mental picture corresponds with the fact. 
In this way we can train the imagination to remember, 
and make fine additions to our mental picture gallery. 

In educating children, it is very important that we 
should give them opportunities to enrich their minds 
with pictures of something fair and pleasant. 

There remains to be spoken of, a possible evil that 
may spring unawares from the imagination. The life 
may be harmed by living too much in the world of the 
imagination. The dreaming, even of good acts, may take 
the place of the performing of them, while the habit of 
revery, if unrestrained, too often assumes a form that is 
harmful to the strength and purity of the life. 



Industry. 165 



CHAPTER XLII. 

INDUSTRY. 

Industry might well be urged as a duty. I wish, 
however, now to speak of it chiefly as an aid in accom- 
plishing other duties. Few things are more helpful 
towards right living than industry, and few more con- 
ducive to wrong living than idleness. 

When we speak of idleness, we must remember that 
no one is perfectly idle, excepting when asleep, and 
possibly not even then. We are always busy about 
something or other. If the hands and the feet are idle, 
the mind is always active. If it is not busy with study, 
or with some other useful occupation, it is busy with 
dreams and fancies. Even the Neapolitan beggars, lying 
stretched in the sun or the shadow, are talking or think- 
ing or dreaming about something. 

By industry we mean activity that is regular, and de- 
voted to the carrying out of some purpose. More 
definitely, it is activity that is designed to be useful to 
ourselves or to others. It is thus a regulated activity 
by which our own welfare, or that of others, may be 
furthered. 

We are apt to think, or at least to feel, that the neces- 
sity of working regularly is a hardship. Because as we 
get tired with our work we look forward with eagerness 
to the time of rest, we are apt to think that the pleas- 
antest life would be one in which it should be all rest. 



1 66 Ethics for Young People. 



A little thought, however, will show us that the neces- 
sity of regular occupation which is laid upon most of us, 
is one of the great blessings of our lives. 

Regular industry is helpful to the habit of self-com- 
mand, which, as we have already seen, is of fundamental 
importance in our lives. Industry is helpful towards 
this in various ways. 

In the first place industry is helpful to self-command 
because the life is made regular by it. Body and mind 
are by this regularity disciplined into a certain degree 
of orderliness. It is as much easier controlling body 
and mind when they are in such training, as it is for an 
officer to control a body of trained troops instead of an 
undisciplined mob. 

Again a certain amount of activity is more easily con- 
trolled than inertia. You know that a ship must be 
going one or two knots an hour or she will not mind her 
helm. She must be making this way in her own course 
moved by the wind or steam or some other motive force. 
A ship that is merely drifting cannot be steered. Now 
in idleness we are simply drifting. The mind is lazily 
busy, but it moves according to any whim or impulse. 
Thus self-control becomes difficult if not impossible. 

In idleness one is thus left to be more easily the prey 
of any temptation. When we are busy about something 
that interests us, this interest tends to keep out of the 
mind tempting thoughts ; or if they enter, the mind, 
through this interest, being like a ship under good head- 
way, keeps its course undisturbed by them. In idleness, 
however, the mind is more at the mercy of whatever 



Industry. 



may occur. Thus idleness is the great foe to upright- 
ness, purity, and earnestness of life. 

It may seem more strange to be told that industry is 
one of the best helps toivards contentment. In fact, how- 
ever, it is the idle who are apt to be not only the most 
vicious, but the most unhappy. There being no regu- 
lar vent for the activity of the life, the energies them- 
selves tend to wear upon the life itself. The mind, not 
regularly occupied, is open to all sorts of discontents and 
envyings. Thus it dreams of what might be and com- 
pares it with what is, and makes itself wretched. 

Indeed, activity is one of the greatest sources of hap- 
piness. In industry part of our energies, at least, are 
regularly employed. However sweet rest may be in its 
place, idleness soon becomes a burden. 

The man indeed is happy who, when he has leisure, 
knows how to give himself regular occupation. Most 
of us however do not know how to employ ourselves, and 
it is well that we should be employed. 

It requires more genius to use leisure than to use 
wealth. It is very important that the young should 
provide interests for themselves, in studies or in philan- 
thropic activity, so that, if later in life they have leisure, 
it may not lie too heavily on their hands. 

Industry is essential for that usefulness by which each 
man may fill his place in the world. The lazy, like the 
wicked, may be made useful. The Spartans used to send 
a drunken slave through the city that the sight of his 
folly and degradation might disgust young men with in- 
temperance. He was made useful; he did not make 



Ethics for Young People. 



himself useful. Every one should try to make himself 
useful. 

From all this it will be seen that the necessity of labor 
is something at which we should rather rejoice than 
complain, and that habits of industry are the great help- 
ers to virtue, happiness, and usefulness. 



Habit. 



169 



CHAPTER XLIII. 

> 

HABIT. 

IN speaking of the influence of companions, I said 
that a man tends to imitate the persons by whom he is 
surrounded ; and we saw that while this tendency may 
work harm, it may also work much good : and that, in 
fact, the development of civilization has been largely 
dependent upon this tendency. 

Most of all, a man tends to imitate himself. The fact 
that he has done a thing once, in a certain way, makes 
it easier for him to do it again in the same way. The 
oftener this is repeated, the more fixed does the habit 
become. At last he cannot do the thing in a different 
way without great effort. Finally it may become almost 
impossible for him to do it in a different way. 
- It is interesting to see the force of habit in little 
things. Through these one can most easily get an 
idea of its real power. 

Notice its power in such a little matter as putting 
on one's clothes, one's coat, for instance. Almost 
every one in doing this always puts the same arm first 
into the sleeve. With some it is the right arm and w^ith 
some it is the left. Probably very few, if they were 
asked, could tell which arm they put in first; but as 
soon as they undertake to do the thing, the arm which 
commonly goes first makes its movement ; and it is only 



17° Ethics for Young People. 

by a strong act of will that it can be made to give way 
to the other. 

Consider, again, the handwriting. This depends in 
part upon the structure of the hand, and perhaps also 
upon one's mental tendencies ; but habit has a great deal 
to do with it ; and we all know how difficult it is to dis- 
guise one's hand. Then, too, consider how easily we 
write with the right hand, and how hard it is to write 
with the left. When the right hand, however, has be- 
come disabled, a man, after long effort, can make his 
left hand write as easily as the right ever did. 

Observe, farther, how skill is acquired in any handi- 
work, so that at last the work goes on better when we 
are not thinking of it, than when we attend to what we 
are doing. The fingers of the skilful pianist take care 
of themselves, and old ladies can read as they knit. 
So strong does habit, as the result of training, become, 
that it is said to be impossible for a good swimmer to 
drown himself, unless he be tied hand and foot. By 
habit that has become an instinct, the body practises 
the lesson that it has learned ; and the man who has 
thrown himself into the water swims in spite of himself. 

Notice, now, the good results of this tendency of habits 
to become fixed. In some cases, like those to which I 
have referred, the life of the person is, in a sense, doubled. 
As was just said, the old ladies knit and read or talk at 
the same time. So in very many things, the body that 
has been trained does the work while the mind is left 
free to busy itself as it will. 

Another great advantage that springs from the fixity 



Habit. 



171 



of habits is found in the fact that, by means of this, our 
lives may make real progress. What we have gained is 
secured to us. 

Think how hard it would be if we had continually to 
start again from the beginning. How the soldier shrinks 
when he first goes into a battle ; how gladly he would 
flee ! It is said that green soldiers are sometimes placed 
alternately with those that have been seasoned in many 
a fight, that the stability of the veterans may keep the 
raw recruits ir their place. The old soldiers have got 
so in the habit of marching and standing as they are 
told, that it has become with them a matter of course. 

Consider, too, how a man who is in the habit of 
handling money lets it pass through his hands with 
hardly a thought of the possibility of keeping any of it. 
In such cases habit may sometimes be a better safeguard 
than principle that has not hardened into habit. Prin- 
ciple untrained may sometimes give way to a temptation 
which habit would withstand. 

This fact applies to everything that we do, and to 
every relation of our lives. We can make a habit of 
honesty, of industry, of kindliness, of attention, of cour- 
tesy, and of whatever we will. Indeed, Aristotle, one of 
the wisest men of antiquity, defined virtue as a habit of 
rightdoing. 

Consider what power we have thus over our lives. 
We shape them to a large extent as we choose, and then, 
through habit, they tend to harden into the shape that 
we have given them, as the plaster hardens into the 
shape which the artist has chosen. 



172 



Ethics for Young People. 



The matter has, very obviously, another side. 
Bad habits form as readily as good ones. I am not 
sure that they do not form more readily than good ones, 
because virtues require more effort than faults. We 
drift into faults ; but to make the best life, we have to 
take control of it and guide it. 

Think, now, how many bad habits are formed,— 
habits of inattention, of carelessness, fretfulness, of evil 
speaking, of selfishness, and others that are even worse. 
I have in another place spoken of the habit of drunk- 
enness, which comes on so quietly that one does not 
suspect it until it may be too late. 

Indeed, a bad habit is the last thing that most of us 
are afraid of. We think that we are acting always from 
our own choice, that it is no matter what we do now, 
because another time, whenever we wish, we can do dif- 
ferently. But all the while a certain habit is forming 
and hardening, until at last we find ourselves almost 
helpless. Thus, even our tastes, our amusements, our 
selection of books, the tendency even of our most 
secret thoughts, are becoming fixed, and we are becom- 
ing permanently the persons we meant to be only for 
the moment. 

If the artist takes such pains with the plaster that he 
is forming, so that it may harden into a shape of beauty, 
what care should we take of the habits which are to 
effect so strongly and permanently our bodies, our 
minds, and our hearts. 




Temptations. 



173 



CHAPTER XLIV. 

TEMPTATIONS. 

I THINK that there is nothing which we tend to picture 
in our minds so falsely as temptations. I should be in- 
terested to know what ideas of temptation are held by 
all who read this little book. 

We are apt to think of temptation as something 
black and terrible. Perhaps we think of it as something 
bat-like, hovering about with wings and horns as Apol- 
lyon is pictured in the Pilgrim's Progress. Perhaps the 
preachers and moralists have had something to do with 
forming the tendency to think of temptation in this way. 
They rightly paint it as something terrible, and so we 
come to think of it as being repulsive in its form as it is 
dangerous to our lives. 

In this way we get such notions of temptation that we 
fail to recognize it when it actually comes. We say, " O 
you pleasant and harmless-looking thing, there cannot 
be anything wrong about you." Thus we give our- 
selves up to it and follow it wherever it will lead. 

First of all, you need to fix in your minds that temp- 
tation always presents itself as something extremely 
pleasant, or at least desirable. This will be clear if you 
ask yourself what is meant by a temptation. A tempta- 
tion is, very obviously, something that tempts. It must, 
therefore, be something that attracts; that is, that ap- 



174 



Ethics for Young People, 



pears to be a very pleasant thing to do. If it did not 
look pleasant to us, it would not be a temptation. 
Nobody is ever tempted to do anything that seems un- 
pleasant. 

In the next place, you need to fix it in your mind 
that the temptation always seems reasonable. What 
you are tempted to do seems not merely to be some- 
thing pleasant; it seems something that is, to a greater 
or less extent, reasonable. 

The pleasantness is indeed sometimes stronger than 
the reasonableness ; that is, a man is so attracted by the 
thing, that he does it even when his reason tells him it 
is neither right nor wise. This is, however, in rather 
extreme cases. Ordinarily, temptation is as plausible as 
it is attractive. 

We see the plausibility of temptation from the fact 
that every mood and every passion tends to justify itself. 

When you are angry without a reasonable cause, you 
do not say to yourself, " This anger is wrong and unrea- 
sonable ; I am making a fool of myself, besides giving 
pain to another." This is not the way in which you 
reason with yourself when you are in a passion. What 
you do say to yourself is something like this : " There 
was never anybody in the world that was treated so 
badly as I am. That fellow is the meanest, most selfish, 
and most disagreeable person in the world. There is 
nobody that would not, if so treated, be as angry as I 
am. In fact, I am not angry at all. I was never cooler 
in my life. I see things precisely as they are. I don't 
care because the thing was done to me ; I only look at 



Temptations. 



175 



the principle of the thing." This you say, when, per- 
haps, you are bursting with rage, and when in half an 
hour you will feel heartily ashamed of yourself. 

The boy that is tempted to disobey his parents is apt 
to put the thing very plausibly to himself. He thinks 
perhaps that his parents would not really care, or he 
thinks that it is so little a matter that there can be no 
harm in it, or he thinks that he knows very much more 
about the thing than they do ; that they forbade him to 
go on the ice because they thought it was not strong 
enough, whereas he knows that it is as strong as need 
be. Or, he thinks that there was never a boy kept so 
close and so bothered by rules as he is ; and that the 
manly thing is to assert his independence. 

In all this you see there are many things that he 
does not think of. He does not think of what he owes 
to his parents, of their love and care. He does not 
think that they have much more knowledge and experi- 
ence than he ; and that, though they may now and then 
make a mistake, yet this is nothing to the blunders that 
he would make and the trouble he would bring upon 
himself, if he were left to look out for himself. He 
does not think of the duty of obedience. 

A young man in business is tempted to take some 
money that belongs to his employer. We saw in a 
former chapter how the imagination leads him on to 
commit the theft. We now have to see how plausible 
the temptation may appear. 

The young man thus tempted thinks that his em- 
ployer will not miss the money; that he will be just as 



176 



Ethics for Young People. 



well off without it as with it, while to himself it will be 
everything. Then the amount is so small that it really 
is no great sin if he takes it. Above all, he thinks that 
it is only a loan. He needs it only for a little time, and 
then he will restore it ; there can certainly be no great 
harm in that. He perhaps takes the money ; and after 
a while he is tempted to make a similar " loan." He goes 
through the same reasoning as before, except that now 
he is deeper in debt, and he thinks that if he does not 
take a little more now he will never be able to pay back 
that which he took before. Finally he takes still more 
as a matter of self-defence. He will be ruined if he 
does not. It is no longer a matter for argument. It 
can hardly be called a temptation. It is a necessity. 
Then, perhaps, when he persuades himself that it is too 
late to turn back, he admits, for the first time, that he is, 
what he has been all along, namely, a thief. 

Such examples might be multiplied indefinitely, for 
all temptation is attractive, and nearly all temptation is 
plausible. 

This is one of the most important things to be borne 
in mind. Knowing under what disguise temptation 
conceals its ugliness and its sin, we may be on our 
guard that we are not imposed upon by it, and do not 
take it for granted that because a thing seems so attrac- 
tive and reasonable it must therefore be right. 

Temptation may be a help as truly as a hindrance. 
If it comes to us without our seeking, resistance to it 
may strengthen our moral fibre, just as meeting and 
conquering any physical or mental obstacle may 



Temptations. 



1 77 



strengthen our bodily or mental fibre. Emerson says : 
u As the Sandwich Islander believes that the strength 
and valor of the enemy he kills passes into himself, so 
we gain the strength of the temptation we resist" 1 

It must be remembered, however, that when one 
throws himself willingly in the way of temptation, he 
shows that he is already half prepared to yield to it. 



1 " Compensation," in the first series of Essays. 



178 Ethics for Young People. 



CHAPTER XLV. 

THE CONSCIENCE. 

THE conscience is that within a man which, if he is 
tempted to do wrong, often warns him and strives to 
hold him back. If he persists in the act, conscience often 
makes him very uncomfortable while it is being done, 
and when the deed has been accomplished reproaches 
him for his fault. 

Conscience is thus placed to be the guide of our life. 
We may compare it to the private oracle of Socrates, of 
which I have already spoken. Or, we may compare it 
to the compass, which is placed in a ship in order that 
by it the sailors may control their course. 

Nothing in our lives can be more important than that 
we should attend to the voice of conscience, and obey 
it; disobedience to it means the ruin of our lives. 

Yet there is scarcely anything of which men are 
more heedless, so far as care for it is concerned, even if 
they pay more or less attention to its warnings. 

Consider how careful the sailors are of the compass 
by which they are to steer the ship. The compass, 
you know, does not point exactly north and south ; it 
varies a little according to the part of the world where 
it is. It is more or less affected by what is about it. 
The iron that is in the ship affects it, and makes its irreg- 
ularity greater. If all this were not known and thought 



The Conscience. 



179 



of, the compass might lead the ship to its destruction. But 
it is all thought of. The variation of the needle is taken 
into the account. An extra compass is sometimes 
placed at the mast head, far above any disturbance from 
the iron that enters into the construction of the ship, in 
order that there it may follow its own laws. 

The conscience, like the compass, has its variations. 
It does not always point straight to the right. Some- 
times, in critical moments, it fails to give any indication 
whatever. 

Surely these irregularities are worthy of the most 
careful study. Let us consider some of them. 

The conscience is sometimes wholly silent when we have 
most need of its guidance. 

Perhaps the greatest number of our faults are those 
of omission and carelessness. In moments of pure 
thoughtlessness the conscience is inactive ; and yet it is 
in these moments that we often need it most. 

Suppose that a man has some important duty to per- 
form. He is perhaps the captain of an ocean steamer. 
His vessel is in critical circumstances, and needs his 
care. He goes down to his dinner, gets interested in 
talking with his passengers, and forgets his ship, until 
it is too late. 

It is through such neglect that many bad habits ob- 
tain the mastery over men. They come from pure 
thoughtlessness ; and conscience gives no warning. 

Acts of cruelty often spring from thoughtlessness. 
The person speaks or acts without thought, and the 
conscience has no opportunity to protest. 



i8o 



Ethics for Young People. 



How much damage is done by pure heedlessness. 
The boy does not mean to do any harm, but the harm 
is done. If it were anything wrong that he was making 
up his mind to do, conscience would speak ; but at what 
moment could it interfere in this time of utter careless- 
ness ? 

It is worth while to remember, then, that during so 
large portions of our life conscience sleeps at its post. 
It is at times, too, in which we most need its guidance, 
for they are full of peril and temptation. 

Knowing this failure of conscience, we should take it 
into our calculation, as the sailor takes into his calculation 
the irregularity of his compass. We should provide 
against danger by taking measures in advance for our 
protection. 

It is one of the most remarkable things in our natures, 
that we can govern ourselves even in these moments of 
carelessness. A boy, for instance, starts to go to school. 
He starts early so as to give himself time to play by 
the way. Having this time, he stops to play. In all 
this there is nothing wrong. But in his play he forgets 
his school, and so arrives tardy, or not at all. How 
can this tardiness and all similar results of heedlessness 
be prevented? 

The trouble with the boy was that he did not fix it 
with sufficient force in his mind that he must be at 
school at the proper hour. If he had done this, issuing 
to himself a peremptory command, the force of this 
command would have been felt even in his thoughtless- 
ness and play; and the impulse which he gave to' him- 



The Conscience. 



181 



self at starting would have brought him safe to school 
at its opening. 

Knowing, then, that we are thus exposed, through 
thoughtlessness, to do what we shall afterwards wish had 
not been done, or to neglect what we shall wish had 
been done, we should, in advance, issue our commands 
to ourselves ; and if these commands are given earnestly, 
the self, even in our forgetfulness, will be pretty sure to 
obey. 

Conscience often fails to warn us when we are doing 
wrong, because we persuade ourselves that what we are 
doing is not wrong. In the chapter on temptation we 
have seen that every mood and every passion tends to 
justify itself. This plausibility of temptation does much 
to silence the voice of conscience. 

In one way the conscience comes to our help in these 
matters. After the fact, it often reproaches us with our 
wrong-doing or our neglect. We feel that our careless- 
ness was wrong, perhaps even a crime or a sin. This 
after-thought is one of the most important of the means 
by which conscience trains us. We had not dreamed 
the thing was wrong till we feel the reproach. Being 
impressed in this way by conscience that we have done 
wrong, we shall find it easier at another time to re- 
member and to avoid the offence. 

Thus one speaks a word that gives pain to another. 
Seeing the pain that he has caused, he reproaches him- 
self with his carelessness or his ill-temper. This re- 
proach is the voice of conscience. The person has 
learned a lesson ; namely, that such cruelty, whethef 



182 



Ethics for Young People. 



designed or not, is wrong. Another time, he may re- 
member this lesson, and keep back the sharp and poi- 
soned speech. 

All this suggests another way in which conscience 
may come to fail us in our hour of need. If we do not 
heed its voice, it will tend to become silent and leave us to 
ourselves. In this respect it may be compared to some 
delicate tool. A boy has a good jackknife given to him. 
He is pleased with the gift and begins to use it on 
everything. He tries to cut pieces of wood that have 
knots in them ; or brings its edge even against nails. 
The knife, being forced thus against what will not yield, 
becomes dull and jagged, and finally refuses to cut any- 
thing. When we do not heed our conscience, we our- 
selves are the hard bodies by which it is dulled and 
made useless. Or we may compare it to a magnet, 
which, if it is not used, tends to lose its power, and to 
become like any other bit of steel. 

Another way in which the conscience loses its power 
is through the influence of bad companions. We have 
seen, in another chapter, how much we are' influenced 
by those with whom we associate. We tend to 
forget that what we become accustomed to see and 
hear is wrong. We come to think that we can do 
without harm what others do. Thus we quiet our con- 
science, and it ceases for a time, at least, to trouble us. 

Some may think, perhaps, that it is a great thing if 
they can thus get rid of so troublesome a companion. 
Two things are, however, to be remembered. 

One is, that though the conscience may be put to sleep 



The Conscience. 



183 



for a time, it may sometime awake. Though we may 
avoid its guidance, perhaps we may not always avoid its 
reproaches. The second is, that one who has lost his 
conscience has lost the best part of his manhood. 

I am sure, however, that most will feel that the con- 
science is a thing to be watched and guarded and obeyed, 
as the sailors watch and guard and obey the compass 
which is their guide, that thus the voyage of life may be, 
in the truest sense, a successful one. 



Ethics for Young People. 



CHAPTER XLVI. 

CONCLUSION. 

THIS little book is simply an introduction to the study 
of Ethics. At its close it may be well to glance for a 
moment at some of the elements that enter into this 
study when it is pursued more fully. 

One part of Ethics consists in considering the relation 
between morality and religion, how far morality is helped 
by religion and generally affected by religion. This is 
a very important matter for consideration. 

There is also to be studied the philosophy of morality \ 
what are its fundamental principles, and what is the basis 
upon which it finally rests ; and what is its relation to 
our thought of the world in general. 

There is also the history of Ethics. This consists of 
two parts. One is the history of the various theories 
about morality, and the other is the history of morality 
itself, showing the stages through which different peoples 
have passed in their moral life, and the historical origin 
and development of the different virtues. 

There is also what is called applied Ethics. This, al- 
so, may have two parts. In one it may consider, as we 
have been doing, only much more fully, what is the true 
life for individuals. In the other part, it considers the 
application of Ethical principles to the world at large, 
and seeks to discover what are the best methods of 
charity and reform. 



Conclusion. 



i8 5 



This last is a very important aspect of Ethical 
study. There is much suffering in the world from pov- 
erty and crime; and one of the most pressing needs of 
the world to-day is that those who have the good of 
others at heart should find out the best way of lighten- 
ing or removing these evils. I hope all who read this 
little book will take an interest in this branch of Ethical 
study, and will do something to make the world better 
and happier. 



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